OUR VIEW: Security precautions well worth the effort

In today’s crazy world of identity theft and hackers on the rise, proper computer security has never been more important. Most people seem to know this, but few seem to know what this actually entails. Securing a computer is more than making sure someone doesn’t steal the thing, it involves proper use of the Internet, e-mail and strong passwords.

Perhaps one of the most important and easiest things to fix is creating a secure password. In the past, passwords weren’t as big of a deal. The biggest fear was someone close to you finding out your password. Today, the bigger danger is someone you don’t even know finding out your password, thereby gaining access to your records.

Creating a strong password is not difficult, but it does take some creativity and forethought. Unfortunately, many fail to put in the time for something so simple. In a 2002 study conducted by a bank in England, it was found 50 percent of clients used a password that was the name of a family member, 8 percent used the name of a pet and 9 percent used the name of a celebrity. How about that for creativity? Chances are, passwords for many haven’t evolved much beyond that today.

Fortunately, USU IT Services has created a password policy that forces USU students to create more secure passwords. Under the old password policy, which allowed only six characters, a hacker could go through every password possibility in about an hour and a half, with the average time to crack around 47 minutes. Likely this would have taken less time, especially considering common passwords included “aggies” or “123456.”

The new policy is much more secure, requiring a minimum password length of eight characters. If a person uses exactly eight characters, this creates around 4.06 trillion password combination possibilities. This would take a hacker an average of 2.35 days to crack a password. That’s a long time, likely not worth the effort.

We applaud and appreciate USU IT for making this password policy change, and hope USU students will be smart about password use. In fact, USU IT Services provides more than secure passwords. They provide many of the tools necessary to secure your computer system, all free of charge. It just takes the time to go to their site, download and install these programs.

Even though USU’s Aggiemail, Access and Blackboard accounts are more secure, this doesn’t solve the problem of other passwords. Many people use the same password for every account. This is risky business. If someone discovered one password, they could gain access to all e-mail accounts, school accounts and even online banking. Today’s digital world is every bit as risky as the real world. All Internet users should have a variety of secure passwords, especially to protect online banking accounts.

This isn’t rocket science. It’s basic computer security, and the responsibility is yours to secure your accounts.