- So, how do we do better with passwords?
We've used passwords for decades
in order to protect our accounts.
And we can see that they are no longer sufficient.
So there are two angles
we can look at this problem from,
one from the consumer side
and one from the organizational side.
From the organizational side, we need to do a better job
of securing and encrypting our passwords themselves.
So then it means use hashing algorithms,
use salted hashes to actually increase the difficulty
for actually cracking the passwords.
And also from an organizational standpoint
we need to secure the password storage as well.
On top of that from an organizational standpoint,
organizations should support longer passwords.
I know you'll probably look at some websites where
they'll say they only support passwords
up to eight characters, and we can't do that
from an organizational standpoint anymore.
We really need to support longer and longer passwords
because longer passwords are much more secure
than smaller, complex passwords.
From a consumer standpoint, there isn't too much
they can do to manipulate how the passwords are stored.
So really consumers should look
for two-factor authentication.
They should definitely enable two-factor authentication
on all of their accounts.
And even if a password gets compromised
if an individual has two factor authentication
on their account, the intruders can't get into their account
without having, let's say their phone as well.
So there are many systems that do not
support two factor authentication.
So that's why on the organizational side
to actually implement.
But from a consumer standpoint, you know
most of the popular applications now support two
factor authentication from all of your email clients
to all of your social media clients as well.
The onerous is on the consumer side though, to go
into your settings and actually turn those features on.
So very highly recommended to implement two-factor
authentication. And while that won't prevent any breaches,
it will prevent an intruder
from actually accessing your account.
Once that information is breached.