Posts Tagged ‘Security’

10 Technology Trends to Watch in 2010…

February 12th, 2010
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As near as I can predict, based on what I’ve been hearing, reading, and researching in the Educational Technology field these past couple of years, the major trends to watch through this next academic year (in no particular order) are:

  1. Cloud computing – as demand for scalable networks spreads dynamically during the ebbs and flows of our recovering economy, the power struggle for control (or at least not losing any perceived footholds already assumed) will continue to be a hot topic for debate and a popular hook of tech-tabloid headlines.
  2. Green technology – The aforementioned economic turbulence will continue to drive demand for such innovations as eTextbooks, paperless assignments, redesign and allocation of formerly tech-centered spaces toward more socially inviting ones, and power consumption reduction solutions.
  3. Web 2.0 collaboration – I expect to see increased migration among faculties and staff toward web-based collaboration apps including off-site storage, social-bookmarking, and eportfolio creation tools.
  4. Security – IT departments will have their hands full dealing with security and privacy issues both real and imagined.
  5. mLearning – pushing information to handheld devices as well as delivering instruction to mobile platforms will be one of the hot attention-getters world-wide this year (it’s about reaching the masses).
  6. Bandwidth – The battle for bandwidth will continue as new technologies are developed to speed delivery through existing channels as well as create new models for wireless delivery.
  7. Tablet readers – The publishing elite and their parasitic entourage will be working around the clock to deliver content to this new platform du jour.
  8. Social media networking – Social Media will continue to buzz about “who” you know (not “what”), and “how” you are connected.
  9. Monetizing the web – The new relationship economy will continue to churn creative models of monetizing the web via lite app upgrades, click-thru ads, push content, subscription feeds, paid apps, and ??
  10. Knowledge management – The data deluge will increasingly pressure enterprises of all types to ensure digital literacy among their constituents through new models of continuous professional development delivery promising baseline technology adoption, adaptation and integration within their defined best practices.

Five years ago, the buzzwords were all about email, spam, phishing, cookies, and adware. Cutting edge technology gurus were explaining Podcasting and RSS feeds. But many of these problems and interests were addressed by software-centric solutions.

The new models are trending toward virtualization of servers, networks, and storage which simply means the top 10 trends to watch will resolve themselves in some virtualized solution as opposed to a device-centric fix. In other words, the networked crowd will benefit from a distance.

So grab your smart device and find a seat near the babbling data stream. Watch the ebb and flow of these trendy buzzwords as they move with the tide. And add your valuable input by interacting with the networked crowd. More data is better if we want an accurate picture of the future.

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Posted in Education, Environment, environmentalism, Futurism, Internet, Social Media, Sustainability, Technology

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How to Create Strong Passwords Easy to Remember…

January 7th, 2010
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Example of a Single Point of Failure
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How To Choose Very Strong Passwords That Are Easy To Remember (reprinted from the Social Oomph Newsletter)

What makes a password strong is the combination of different alphanumeric, special characters, and capitalization that you use, and of course the length of the password.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to remember and type an epistle when I fill out a password field. And, ideally, I don’t want to use the same password on many sites, because if one is compromised then my entire life is unlocked.
I want to show you here how to choose very strong passwords for every website that you use, that are different for each website, and are each only 9 characters in length max.
A study found that an 8-character password that’s constructed in the manner I’m going to show you has 7.2 quadrillion different combinations, and will take 83.5 days to crack if the hacker can try 1 billion different passwords per second.

Step 1: Pick 2 Starting Characters

To make it easy to remember, all your passwords are going to start with the same characters. But these are not just any characters. Pick 2 characters from the list of special characters that you see above the numbers on your keyboard and to the left of the Enter key.

These characters are: ~`!@#$%^&*()_-+={}[]:;”‘<>?/|\\

Pick any two of them as your password starting characters. To show you an example as you read through the steps, let’s pick $ and % (pick your own two).

In my example, all my passwords are going to start with $%.

Step 2: Pick 2 Ending Characters

In exactly the same way as above, pick two different special characters that will be at the end of your passwords. Don’t pick the same characters as your starting characters.

For the purposes of my example, let’s pick * and ^. Hence, all my passwords are going to end with *^.

Step 3: Construct The Middle Part Using The Website Name

This is the fun part. Take the first 6 characters of the website domain name where you want to use the password. If the domain name is shorter than 6 characters, then use the full domain name.

In my example, let’s create a password www.microsoft.com.

The first 6 characters of the domain name is “micros”.

Now we’re going to substitute some characters and capitalize others.

Substitute the following characters: a becomes @, e becomes 3, i becomes 1, o becomes 0, and u becomes ^.

Now we have “m1cr0s”.

Now, decide on a standard for yourself regarding which character(s) you’re going to capitalize.

For this example, let’s say we’re always going to capitalize the 3rd consonant.

So now we have “m1cR0s”.

The next step is to drop the last character (“s” in our case), and append the Ending Characters (*^) that you picked in Step 2.

Our password is now “m1cR0*^”.

The last step is to add the Starting Characters (Step 1) to the beginning of the password.

The final password is “$%m1cR0*^”.

A Few More Examples

Domain: www.twitter.com, Password: “$%tw1Tt*^”.
Domain: www.facebook.com, Password: “$%f@c3B*^”.

Domain: www.ebay.com: Password: “$%3b@*^”

Remember

Pick your own 2 starting characters and your own 2 ending characters, don’t just use the same ones I used in the example.

In addition, make your own capitalization rule (you can capitalize more than 1 character if you want to.

You can also use more than the first 6 characters of the domain name if you want to. It just means your passwords will be slightly longer.

Is This Password Strong?

Yes, it is very strong. With this method you’re potentially using any of 30 special characters, 10 numerals, and 26 lower case and 26 uppercase characters.

Unless a hacker happens to have a water-cooled supercomputer in his briefcase, he will not be able to crack your password.

Making It Even Stronger
If you’re concerned that some hackers might know about this password construction method, simply pick 3 starting characters and/or 3 ending characters, or as many as you like. Any slight variation of the method makes your passwords even more secure.
Credits
This password construction method was designed by Sammie, a person with a brilliant technical mind.
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