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Tag: password

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Between all of your online accounts, whether personal or work accounts, you probably have many unique — and complex — passwords to manage.  And since you know better than to write them down in a notebook, have them on sticky notes hidden under your mouse pad, or stored digitally on your desktop, what are you supposed to do? 

Passwords are one of the most vulnerable cyber defenses used to protect our online accounts, as passwords are the only barrier between online accounts and cybercriminals who have a desire to access to our data and systems. Utilizing a password manager is a security best practice that cyber professionals are recommending for us.  

Along with other security tips, password managers minimize the risk of mis-managing our passwords. The question that arises here, are password managers secure, and what is our responsibility here to manage the password manager? 

What is a Password Manager?

A password manager is software that allows users to generate passwords, store, and manage account information including usernames and passwords all in one location. Password managers offer other features such as complex password suggestions, identifying weak or repeated passwords used, and alerting its users when their credentials appear compromises. When you use a password manager, you will set a password that is often referred to as the “master” password.  This will be the only password you will need to remember.

Password managers are available in different formats: 

  • An online service hosted by a third party and accessed through a website portal. This type is useful if you need access to the password manager from multiple devices. 
  • Software installed locally on a workstation that can operate either completely offline or connected to the internet to synchronize your information to a cloud database and get software updates.  

Are Password Managers Secure? 

Password managers can offer a high level of security level for account credentials and information, if best practices are used to secure their master password.  Whether you use, or planning to get, an online, or an offline password manager, you need to follow the following practices: 

  • Do your research and get a trusted password manager software that has a high reputation in the industry. 
  • Use a strong master password for your password manager account and never forget it. Some password manager vendors would never retrieve your account if you can’t remember your master password. 
  • Enable two-factor-authentication (2FA) to your password manager account for an extra layer of security.  
  • Keep your password manager software, web browsers, and all other software you use up-to-date. 
  • Audit the list of devices that are approved to access your password manager. 
  • For work-related accounts, always use password managers that are approved by your organization. Follow your organization’s policies, standards and procedures when processing, storing or sharing work-related data. 

Remember, if password managers are managed appropriately, they will offer you the level of security you are looking for to your online accounts’ passwords. 

This post is presented by the GW IT Cybersecurity Risk and Assurance team with information from CISA.

#SecuringGW is a shared responsibility, so if you see something, say something. Report suspicious digital activities, including phishing emails, to abuse@gwu.edu. 

IT Support Questions? For IT support, please contact the Information Technology Support Center at 202-994-GWIT (4948), ithelp@gwu.edu, or visit ithelp.gwu.edu. 

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Longer passwords make brute force attacks more difficult. Brute force attacks involve malicious actors using powerful computers to guess your password. As you can see in the following chart provided by researchers at Hive Systems, the best protection against Brute Force attacks are complex passwords containing at least 13 upper and lower case letters.

It is estimated that passwords of this moderate complexity will take 241 million years to crack.

Adding numbers to the moderate complexity password containing 13 upper and lower case letters increases the password resilience against compromise to 2 billion years.

An even more secure password that adds symbols, would increase the 13 character password resilience to 11 billion years.

For extreme protection, particularly to guard against improvements in processing power of computers, an 18 character password containing numbers, upper and lower case letters, and symbols would take an estimated 19 quintillion years to compromise.

It is important to note that password complexity protects against automated guessing. A 13 character password that contains mixed case words may be difficult for a computer to compromise. However, access to personal information may enable a person to guess a password much more easily than a computer. Consider the implications of family names, birthdates, and occasions being shared on social media and how this information provides some contextual information that could assist someone in their password guessing attempts.

Source: Hive Systems https://www.hivesystems.io/password

This post is presented by the GW IT Cybersecurity Risk and Assurance team.

#SecuringGW is a shared responsibility, so if you see something, say something. Report suspicious digital activities, including phishing emails, to abuse@gwu.edu. 

IT Support Questions? For IT support, please contact the Information Technology Support Center at 202-994-GWIT (4948), ithelp@gwu.edu, or visit ithelp.gwu.edu. 

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Phishing occurs when criminals try to get us to open harmful links, emails or attachments that could request our personal information or infect our devices. Phishing messages or “bait” usually come in the form of an email, text, direct message on social media or phone call. These messages are often designed to look like they come from a trusted person or organization, to get us to respond.

The good news is we can avoid the phish hook and keep our accounts secure with these tips!

Stay Safe with Three Simple Tips

1. Recognize

Look for these common signs:

  • Urgent or emotionally appealing language, especially messages that claim dire consequences for not responding immediately
  • Requests to send personal and financial information
  • Untrusted shortened URLs
  • Incorrect email addresses or links, like amazan.com

A common sign used to be poor grammar or misspellings although in the era of artificial intelligence (AI) some emails will now have perfect grammar and spelling, so look out for the other signs.

2. Resist

If you suspect phishing, resist the temptation to click on links or attachments that seem too good to be true and may be trying to access your personal information. Instead, report the phish to protect yourself and others. Typically, you’ll find options to report near the person’s email address or username. You can also report via the “report spam” button in the toolbar or settings.

3. Delete

Delete the message. Don’t reply or click on any attachment or link, including any “unsubscribe” link. Just delete.

If a message looks suspicious, it's probably phishing. 

However, if you think it could be real, don't click on any link or call any number in the message. Look up another way to contact the company or person directly:

  • Visit a verified website for the company and use this contact information. To find verified websites, search for the site in your web browser or type the address yourself if you’re sure you know it.
  • Use another way to reach the person to confirm whether they contacted you. For example, if you get a strange message from your friend on Facebook, and you have their phone number, text or call them to ask if they sent the message.

GW faculty, students, and staff can forward suspected phishing emails to abuse[@]gwu.edu.  This account is monitored by the GW IT Security team.  They investigate phishing reports to ensure that others at GW do not have the phishing message in their inbox.

Additional Tips available on the Secure-Our-World-Phishing-Tip-Sheet  as well as in the following video published by CISA.

Recognize and Report Phishing (Audio Description)

Posting content obtained from https://www.cisa.gov/secure-our-world/recognize-and-report-phishing

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Creating, managing, and using complex passwords for the many sites and services we all access is a daunting task.  While password managers can assist with the memorization and management challenges, traditional passwords do not leverage modern security capabilities.  A rapidly evolving technology involves passkeys in place of passwords.  At a basic level passkeys leverage your personal computer, mobile device, or even a password manager to provide a validated (through finger print for example) encrypted response to login challenges from a website you have an account on.  This process effectively replaces the matching of a password you submit to one stored on the site.  In the passkey scenario you are providing an encrypted answer to a unique challenge and all of the communications are encrypted.  Through the use of public key and private key technology and in underlying technology, your identity is verified and access granted without your private key being transferred.   There is a more technical explanation of the passkey process here: Passkey (Passkey Authentication) Technopedia June 2023. Basic passkey process steps:
  1. You establish a passkey on a website that supports it using a device that supports the technology.
  2. Once established, when you access a site instead of entering a password, your device will ask you to verify your identity
  3. You use device-based authentication (PIN number, fingerprint, or facial recognition) on your personal device to authorize website access.
  4. Your device responds to the site through an encrypted message confirming your identity.
  5. The website then grants you access.
The process of the challenge question to your device and the messaging back to the site is encrypted, your private key is not transferred, and information about the web site all combine to make this login approach more secure than using passwords.  Using passkeys should help reduce inadvertent credential compromises through fraudulent websites with the added safeguards built in around site verification. A PCWorld article - Passkeys Explained: How to Embrace a Passwordless Future Today from May 2024 has additional information on passkeys and notes there are directories of providers that support passwordless logins:

Services with passkey support

There is no official directory of all providers with passwordless login. Lists are provided by Passkeys.io, Passkeys Directory, and Keeper, among others.
If you utilize a password manager, most offer support for managing and using passkeys. Cloud services can enable passkey use across multiple devices.  While there are many options to explore a simple way to get started would be using solutions from vendors deeply connected to devices and the device operating systems software like Google, Apple, and/or Microsoft.

Ars Technica published an article in May of 2023 with frequently asked questions about passkeys  Passkeys may not be for you, but they are safe and easy—here’s why   The article covers common questions about privacy, personal account security, and trust.  The following excerpt from the site recaps how the passkey process works while enhancing your personal cybersecurity. (emphasis added).

Que: Passkeys give control of your credentials to Apple/Google/Microsoft, to a third-party syncing service, or to the site you’re logging in to. Why would I ever do that? Ans: Assuming you’re using a password to sign in to a service such as Gmail, Azure, or Github, you’re already trusting these companies to implement their authentication systems in a way that doesn’t expose the shared secrets that allow you to log in. Logging in to one of these sites with a passkey instead of a password gives the sites the same control—no more and no less—over your credentials that they had before.

The reason is that the private key portion of a passkey never leaves a user’s encrypted devices. The authentication occurs on the user device. The user device then sends the site being logged in to a cryptographic proof that the private key resides on the device logging in. The cryptography involved in this process ensures that the proof can’t be spoofed.

Key takeaways:
  • Passwords will still be present for many sites for some time.
  • Passkeys provide more secure authentication for sites and device that support them.
  • Explore passkeys on a couple of sites and expand your use as you gain experience.
  • It is a good idea to try the technology, as it will become more prevalent and in some cases required to access web applications.
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