Genisyst's HITs

After covering what makes for a good password in my previous post, it is important for developers to understand the equal importance of storing passwords securely. Whether you have designed an email service, web application or even operating system, it is essential that you store your passwords securely and specifically NOT AS PLAIN TEXT!! It is not enough to simply rely on your website security either, so any passwords in your database need to be encrypted somehow. The problem with plain text: No matter how much protection you have on the storage of your databases, there are always ways to obtain the data they hold, including social engineering and even a disgruntled employee as well as more complicated 'hacking' methods. You may think this is fine for your Mongolian throat singing appreciation website, which only has 3 members, where the most damage that could be done is an obscene post on...

It is safe to say that technology plays an integral part in our lives today, from socialising to shopping, business to banking. As such, we all have a huge number of password protected accounts. Due to the sensitivity of information protected by these passwords, it is necessary that they are well chosen to provide the most security. To best demonstrate what constitutes a 'strong' password I will use a series of examples in ascending order of strength. DO NOT USE - E.g. 'password', '12345', 'qwerty' or 'secret' A password like the ones above should NEVER be used as the are easy to both GUESS or CRACK. Very Weak - Your name, any dictionary word - E.g 'computer' These passwords, while better than the previous level of security, are still both easy to GUESS and CRACK. Not only because the passwords are simple, but using personal information makes it much easier to...