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Protecting your online accounts, your data, and your customers’ information is now more important than ever. Industry and state-mandated compliances are now forcing businesses to tighten their cybersecurity, and it’s critical that every human being on the Internet take their own personal security seriously. This guide is designed to provide the best practices for strong passwords.

Your cybersecurity is only as strong as your weakest link, and in many cases, that starts with your passwords. As the Internet of Things continues to become more ubiquitous in our homes and businesses, we risk exposing our private lives to the public-at-large.  When we don’t manage our ‘always connected’ devices, we may be placing the security of our businesses and homes at risk.

Passwords… can be annoying, if we’re being honest. They are, however, also incredibly important to your business’ overall security strategy. We’ve all heard the suggestions on how to create secure passwords. As it turns out, there is more to modern security then that. Let’s explore a few options to help you create useful passwords, and take a look why passwords are only the beginning. 

Any business in operation today needs to keep modern realities concerning cybersecurity at top-of-mind if they are going to successfully maintain the business going forward. One major issue to be cognizant of is the increasing prevalence of phishing attacks.

Password security is a tricky part of running a business. After all, it’s not just dealing with your own password, but those of the many employees all throughout your organization. In times like this, it’s helpful to provide them with a list of how to make the best passwords possible. Here are a couple of examples for what to do, as well as what you shouldn’t do, when building a proper password.

Passwords are always a major pain point for businesses, but in some industries, their importance is emphasized more than others. In particular, government-based organizations need to be prepared to keep more secure passwords. While we understand that not all organizations are government-based, there’s something to be said about proper password practices that we can all learn something from.

The funny thing about some documents is how the data written on them can strongly influence how important they are. If, for instance, there were two pieces of paper on a table, there is objectively no difference between the two, and so they are objectively equivalent in value.

Let’s be honest - not all of us have the best memories. This makes the ability for many browsers to remember our passwords seem like a godsend. However, is this capability actually a good thing for your cybersecurity? The answer may not surprise you.

As you may expect, the average Internet scammer isn’t above resorting to dirty tricks to claim their ill-gotten prize from their victims. A recent scam demonstrates just how dirty these tricks can truly be, and unfortunately, how ill-prepared many are to handle them.

A new email scam is making its rounds and it has a lot of people concerned with just how much a hacker can peer into one’s private life. How would you react if a stranger emailed you saying they had inappropriate webcam footage of you?

With every successful intrusion and theft of data, the images of hackers as criminal masterminds and unstoppable forces of technology gone awry grow. In fact, there’s an increasing narrative that hackers are everywhere, just waiting to use their mad ‘skillz’ to steal your credit card information and buy their limited edition dolls, sorry, “action figures.” Worse, they’re just waiting to hold your data hostage and extort ransom from your business.

There is no understating the importance of strong, reliable passwords to your organization’s network security, especially to protect its wireless connection. However, this can create some friction with your staff when they try to connect to Wi-Fi using their mobile device. To make accessing the Internet easier, scannable QR codes can be used to connect to the Internet.

Passwords are all over the place these days, whether they’re required to access an online account, or access the devices used to open these accounts. While both types of passwords can make for ideal security conditions, this is only the case if the passwords are strong. If your passwords can be guessed by just about anyone, can you really call it a security measure? New insights from SplashData show that passwords aren’t being considered as much as they need to be.

Technology is supposed to make things easier, yet it’s a common source of frustration when it doesn’t do what it’s supposed to. As an IT company, we experience technology frustrations all the time, and we wish that many of these frustrations could just be eliminated altogether. In our opinion, here are four technology frustrations that need to go.

Security is a hot-button issue for all types of businesses, but cyber security is such a complex subject that it’s difficult to jam-pack its many intricacies into one blog article. Sometimes understanding just a few ways to improve your business’s security practices can be a significant benefit for your organization.

Changing your password is a pain. After you’ve gone several months with the same one, it can be difficult to remember your new password. Despite this, it’s always recommended that you change your passwords often. Unfortunately, when you change all of your passwords often, it’s even easier to forget them. Instead of using a post-it note on your monitor, you should instead try using a password manager.

We see a lot of password-bashing these days, and some people have lost faith in them as a security measure. But, unfortunately, a lot of the blame for this lies in human memory. We just don’t pick passwords that are strong enough. In fact, a mind-numbing one in 20 people still use “password” to keep their information safe.

This holiday season might leave technology and entertainment supergiant Sony with nothing but a big lump of coal in its stocking. In a high-profile hack, hackers continue to leak Sony’s employees’ sensitive information like Social Security numbers, passports, and even personal emails. This is obviously an issue for the company, but so is its lack of IT security, as shown by their passwords being stored in a folder named “Passwords.”

Last week, the Heartbleed bug was identified as a weakness in the OpenSSL cryptographic library, potentially leaking two-thirds of the Internet's secure information from any websites utilizing this encryption style. While most major websites such as Google, Yahoo, and Facebook released patches quickly, it does little to actually remediate the problem. Your data could have been leaked over the year-plus that the vulnerability could have been accessed. There is no way to know if it has been compromised.

On April 7th, a new bug on the Internet was discovered that's putting millions of users' personal data at risk. Given the name "Heartbleed bug," it's capable of allowing infiltrators to collect information while you are securely browsing a SSL/TLS website. Since SSL/TLS is so widely used, it's very probably that your personal data is at risk.

On December 3, 2013, security company Trustwave discovered over two million stolen user passwords for popular online services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Twitter, Yahoo, and 93,000 other websites. There's a high probability that you use one of the services affected by the hack. Is your personal information compromised?

Last time, we spoke about password security, we went over the importance of using strong passwords to avoid identity theft. In part two, we will discuss three easy password solutions that can help you manage all of your different passwords.

For sites you need to log into often, having your browser remember your password can save you time logging in, especially if you are using secure passwords that you might need to look up otherwise. There are circumstances where you might want to manage what personal information gets stored in your web browser.

LinkedIn, the popular social network geared towards business networking and communication, has reported a major breach in security. A file containing over six million passwords was leaked and posted on the Internet. What does this mean for you, and what course of action should you take?

The problem with carrying around an expensive, portable piece of equipment is that it's possible for someone to pick it up and run with it. According to LoJack, a security firm that focuses on stolen property, two million laptops are stolen each year. What should you do if you are a victim of laptop theft?

This has been a pretty common topic for us on the Directive blog. We've seen a lot of Upstate New York clients and customers suffer the consequences when online retailers and other account providers experience a security breach. It is equally vital for consumers to know what to do in the event of a security breach as it is the company that is actually breached.

On the topic of identity theft, social media accounts are becoming a high target for hackers, especially for spreading malicious viruses. To some, losing control over their Facebook or Twitter accounts could be just as devastating as having their credit card stolen. Trouble is, for many users, having one login account stolen means hackers have access to their other accounts too.

Your identity has quite a lot of value, especially in the wrong hands. Security firm ZoneAlarm put together some numbers in 2011 concerning identity fraud, and it even shocked us. Let's talk about a few of these statistics and what it means.

Ever since the public has been logging on to the Internet, certain people have been using the Internet to take advantage of others. Whether it be through scams, viruses, malware, phishing, or a whole slew of other dangerous activity, cyber criminals have been very good at making Internet security an industry on its own. With the colossal popularity of social networks like Twitter and Facebook, miscreants are capable of targeting even more users than ever before. On top of that, their methods seem to be hitting people where it hurts. Learn how you can prevent falling into one of their traps.