security

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Notes for Pages 1 & 2 are available at Cloud Computing Opportunities. The page references are for the attachment to this post.

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Four of the main issues that come up when considering moving part of your business operation to the cloud are: Security, Access, Cost, and Ownership. It is important to consider all of these issues as they can affect your business. Only the second issue is not related to the cloud service provider.

This is a short follow-on to the Passwords and Hacking series.

The Internet worm "Morto A" continues to infect computers. It uses Microsoft's Remote Desktop to spread. It attempts to gain access to your computer using Remote Desktop's protocol. It will succeed if your password is one of 37 simple passwords listed below.

Solution: Don't use a simple password. See Passwords and Hacking for various means to create complex passwords.

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There are several services that meet these needs. Like the desktop solutions, some cost and some are free. These tools work by encrypting passwords you enter into your browser and saving those encrypted passwords on a server. In many cases the passwords are encrypted in the browser with JavaScript prior to sending them to the server. When you need a password, the server sends the browser the encrypted password and the browser decrypts it for your use.

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The first part of this series is here.

These programs require a password to access your personal password database, but it is only one password. You can make that password very complex, even to the point of being a whole phrase. For example, if you start with a simple password of “psswrd” (don’t ever use “psswrd” or “password” as your password), then expand it to a whole sentence

Access for this file is through ‘password’.

How many accounts do you have – one, five, ten, twenty or more? There are accounts for email, online banking, games, shopping, retirement, entertainment, Facebook, work, networking, blogging, and others. Many of these categories have multiple accounts. You know that you should use complex passwords, but complex passwords are hard to remember so you reuse the same password for many of these accounts. You are not alone.