I can hear you groan from here – “Why does he want to talk about passwords again? We know about passwords…”.
Why am I talking about Passwords?
I was talking with friends last week – not clients – and I was asked what exactly I do at Octagon Technology. Diana takes care of the statutory and admin stuff, Sophie deals with the web and hosting work and Martin and his team deal with the IT support and emergency work. “So what do you do?”
It’s a good question. (At this point all of our team are now waiting for my answer…)
The quick answer is that I am the CISO so I look after the company’s information and cyber security and do this for the clients that realise this is an important board-level function they need to cover. I have a Master’s Degree in Advanced Computer Security and Digital Forensics (Cyber Security) From Edinburgh Napier University and thirty years’ experience in technology support to help me do this.
But really it is my job to be always thinking about how the ever-changing cyber security landscape impacts organisations and how their policies and procedures need to adapt to protect them. This kind of thinking is why we now offer a Security Operations Centre to those clients that want to do something really special with their cyber security and why I am in the process of completing another IT and Cyber Security Audit for an organisation that needs to know what their real information security is.
I did not bore my friends with that answer…
That answer is your “call to action”. You should talk to me.
Ordinary People
I talked to my friends about their traction with cyber security – passwords and how by making some simple mistakes ordinary people can leave themselves open to the possibility of being hacked. It soon became apparent that they were making many of these mistakes. The next thing was to get more beer and sit down with them and fix these issues, making their lives more cyber secure.
Remember ordinary people work for you!
A scheme for better passwords – although now we recommend not putting the special characters at the end
Passwords are Still Important
It is because you know about passwords that I wrote a mini-series looking at the password habits that threat actors know about and exploit. It also includes a variety of tips on good password practices that you should use in your organisation or business.
Back to Basics: A Password Primer
Back to Basics – The Password Part 2
Back to Basics – The Password Keyboard Walk Part 3
Back to Basics – Password Sharing Part 4
Back to Basics Your Password the Finale Part 5
Back to Basics – One more thing about your passwords Part 6
Passwords – Security Theatre Part 7
Back to Basics – Password Fatigue Part 8
This article will now be Part 9
Have a read of the mini-series, it will not take long and at the end you might find some gaps in your organisation’s cyber security. Fix them yourself or give me a call.
Clive Catton MSc (Cyber Security) – by-line and other articles
Further Reading
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