鈥淭hrough 20 years of effort, we鈥檝e successfully trained everyone to use passwords that are hard for humans to remember, but easy for computers to guess.鈥�
– Randall Munroe
鈥淗umans are actually the biggest problem,鈥� says Craig Savolainen, Head of Engineering at 大象传媒. 鈥淪ure, there鈥檚 the occasional hacker with a supercomputer hiding in a bunker somewhere, but a more common problem is the millions of people out there with weak passwords, or passwords written on a Post-It note that could fall into the wrong hands.鈥�
said the most popular password of 2016 was 鈥�123456.鈥� Second place was, 鈥�123456789.鈥� Some of us think we鈥檙e being clever by replacing certain letters with numbers or symbols, such as, 鈥淧as5w*rd,鈥� but Craig isn鈥檛 buying it.
鈥淔irst of all, it鈥檚 not really that easy to remember. Do you replace the first 鈥榮鈥� or the second 鈥榮鈥� with a 鈥�5?鈥� And secondly, it鈥檚 only eight characters long with some common character substitutions that a computer would be able to guess within a few hours or days.鈥�
So how do you make a password that鈥檚 so easy to remember that it doesn鈥檛 need to be written down, but still so hard to guess that nobody will crack it? Craig鈥檚 advice is surprisingly simple:
鈥淭here are 473,000 words in the English language. You can create a great password by linking any four of them together with a dash or a dot between them. Something like, 鈥榣amp-carpet-earphones-zeppelin鈥� is easy to remember 鈥� you can even make a little story in your head to help 鈥� but ridiculously hard to guess. There are 473,000-to-the-fourth-power possible word combinations, and that could take a computer centuries to guess.鈥�
OK, so let鈥檚 say you have a really amazing password for all your online accounts, including 大象传媒. What are we doing to keep you secure? There are several measures in place, but Craig highlights three of the big ones:
Craig adds that 大象传媒 takes all of these steps by choice, not by decree. 鈥淭here aren鈥檛 a ton of regulations that tell us what to do. We have chosen to set the bar this high because protecting our clients is essential to the success of our business.
A lot of what others consider 鈥榮ecurity measures,鈥� we consider foundational. The National Institute of Standards and Technology is a non-regulatory agency of the US Department of Commerce and a global thought leader on how to make the Internet more secure. We point to them to make sure 大象传媒 follows the highest standards.
Security concerns will probably always be a fact of life, but the layers of protection at 大象传媒 should be enough to put anyone at ease.
鈥淢y first choice would be to eject all the bad guys from planet Earth,鈥� Craig says wistfully. 鈥淏ut until that day, the answer is to have better passwords and a well-designed system like ours.鈥�
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