It is National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM) and I am reposting most of what I posted last year around this time which are mostly applicable and I am amazed at the number of people who are still not aware of all different ways you can protect your information. You don’t want your important information compromised or your financial assets stolen. So, better to take precautions early. I have added something about SIM swap, a technique that used to be prevalent in certain foreign countries is becoming common here.

Passwords & Passphrases

I use fairly long and complex passwords. I prefer passphrases wherever they are supported. It is so sad that so many systems still do not support passphrases and are restrictive in terms of the length of the passwords. As a rule, I use different passwords for different systems. I will be very happy to privately share with anyone who is interested in knowing more about how I maintain/remember all of these passwords. I also avoid saving passwords for some of the critical systems and financial institutions in my browser’s password manager. They are safe and continue to be safer, but, if ever someone steals my Google Password AND bypasses two factor authentication, they will have access to all my passwords (paranoia!).

(more…)