Each year on the first Thursday in May, World Password Day promotes better password habits. And last Thursday, 7 May 2020, was no exception. If you did not realise, passwords are the critical gatekeepers to our digital identities, allowing us to access online shopping, dating, banking, social media, private work, and life communications. Imagine them as being the front door to your house, or even the security guard to your estate. In fact, what is shocking is that as of right

Do you own your Passwords, or do your Passwords OWN YOU? Let me put this out there – there are 2 kinds of people in this world. Those that have ONE password for EVERYTHING; and those that have ONE password for EACH of their application or websites they login to. Which one are you? Well, obviously if you fall into the former category, then let me just say that that is a very dumb thing to do. It is as if you are calling out to all the hackers around the world, “Come! Hack me!

There was a time where blackberry and apple were just fruits in a supermarket. It’s true. The Internet has blurred the lines between the real world and the virtual one. People are spending more time online everyday. I mean, the first thing we see when we wake up is our phone, and the last thing we see before we sleep is our phone! (Don’t tell me that’s not true) However, just as the digital world is becoming more important, it’s also becoming a bigger target for attacks. Yet,

If you travel for work, you are a target. Let me say that again. If you travel for business, YOU. ARE. A. TARGET. And it’s not just business travellers who are targets. Anyone can be a target. You and me both can be targets! Because traveling abroad poses unique cyber security threats. However, business travellers are especially vulnerable. This is because more often than not, they carry sensitive data (both personal and business related) on a variety of devices, including sm

Imagine this: You are in San Francisco for a work trip when you realized the conference you have to attend is a 3-hour drive away. Armed with your work bag in one hand and a Starbucks in the other, you approach the car rental counter to rent a car for the day. You place your work bag on the ground next to your feet as you try to negotiate the car rental prices. Out of the corner of your eye, you suddenly notice a man approach the counter next to you. A few minutes later, he b

In a country other than Singapore, the scenario would go something like this: Last Friday in Boston, I headed to a bar near my hotel with a couple of friends, slung my tote bag on the back of my chair, and spent a pleasant hour talking about the weather. When I got up to leave, my tote bag was gone – complete with my laptop, notebook and a copy of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens that I was only three quarters of the way through. The shocking part was, neither my friends

Saying adiós to Multifactor authentication and hola to Windows Hello Logging into most systems requires two things – a username, and a password. If you know those 2 credentials, then you most likely have what is needed to gain access into the system. One issue with using only a username and password is that once you or someone that you do not know has knowledge of your credentials, they can access the system, whatever it may be. This is where multi-factor authentication comes

“Through 20 years of effort, we’ve successfully trained everyone to use passwords that are hard for humans to remember, but easy for computers to guess.” “Passwords are a literary genre almost too tiny to read, a banal compression of intimacies, a secret we share with distant servers.” Passwords are the bane of all computer users, even geeks like me. We all understand how important they are, but humans are just not very good at remembering arbitrary, uncontexted, detailed pi

The near ubiquity of WiFi hotspots nowadays has led to great advances in access and convenience for many. It’s also a great boon for “road warriors” who do most of their work from the field. However, few people understand the risks of using wireless hotspots. When you go online in open networks that don’t use a password or encryption, potentially everything you send out from your computer can be seen by anyone with adequate technical knowledge. Therefore, whenever possible it