March, 2021

The Power of Passwords!

Hello From IT!

This month’s Tech Bits is all about password awareness. Passwords provide the first line of defense against unauthorized access to an enumeration of your personal items and details that you use daily. From accessing your computer, to gaining access to your Gmail, having a strong password is not only the name of the game, but also it’s the consistency of changing it as well. Let's take a look at the important power of passwords!

First rule of passwords: Don’t talk about your password!

There are many unspoken rules about passwords. I would like to highlight 4 of them you should know:

• Avoid using personal information: Such as your name, age, date of birth, child’s name, pet’s name, or favorite color/song when constructing your password. There is a tendency to type something obvious to you, for you to remember. Well, hackers are aware that people do this. Generally, when passwords are discovered, it's because there was personal information used and it was easily guessed.

• Do not use the same password across multiple accounts: A common thing that happens when you have a good password, is that it is used in several different accounts. A rule of thumb is to have a unique password for each important account. (i.e Email password should be very different from your online banking password)

• Your password should be at least 8 characters long: There are many schools of thought on this particular rule. Here is a mathematical one based on cryptology. The longer the password, the harder it is to crack. Do you remember permutations in grade school? How many combinations of passwords can you make with 8 characters? In this case you can pick 8 different characters alphanumerically, where a lowercase letter and uppercase letter are not the same thing. It has over 200 billion combinations. If we throw in special characters into the password, then it goes into the quadrillions! This is just with 8 characters. I use 10-13 characters in some passwords that are really important.

• Change your password regularly: Although all the rules about passwords are important, changing your password regularly is the glue that binds it all together. It is the best way to ensure that you have control and up to date access to those important accounts. We recommend that you change your password to important accounts every 90 days.

The big question - How am I supposed to remember all these passwords?

Passwords, honestly, can sound like a lot of information overload. Creating passwords only to change them 3 months later. It is why we recommend using LastPass to store these passwords securely, but to also help you to create them as well. We have created trainings and lessons on individual topics on LastPass that are hosted on our IT Portal. If you would like to view our past trainings on LastPass, click here. For the individual topics on LastPass click here.

LastPass Password Generator

An amazing feature that LastPass has is the password generator. This tool makes it easy to create a password when you need one immediately or when you need to change your passwords annually. Let me show you how it works:

When you are in Google Chrome, you can click on the LastPass icon, and it will show this menu of options for you to choose. Click on “Generate Secure Password”

• Here, you will see all the options you have to create a complex password. You can choose the password length, and the type of characters you would like to have. Depending on the rules that are given to you when creating a password on a given site, you may opt to use symbols.

How to change your Gmail and Box Passwords

Time to practice what we preach! Patrick recently sent out an email about changing your Gmail and Box passwords. Let's see how that is done.

Gmail: Google has a support article with a change password button!

• Click this link here to view that page

• Click on the button that says “Change Password”

• It will ask you to verify your current password

• After verification, you can now change your password.

Box: Box also has a support article about how to change its password which you can view here

• Go https://app.box.com/reset and enter the email address associated with your Box account.

• Check your email, you will receive an email with a link to reset your password.

• You will need to re-enter your password for Box Sync and Box Drive on your computer for continued functionality.

That’s it for this month's TechBits! If you found this information useful and intriguing, let us know the value it provided by emailing us at techbits@episcopalrelief.org. We’ll see you next month!