User-Determined Security

Question 1

Strong passwords

Answer 1

Recent studies on the topic of password selection indicate that an alarming rate of password choices are common. A 2011 case study sampling 6 million passwords found that 99.8% of passwords occur in the top 10,000 most used password list, and 91% of those were in the top 1,000 list. This means that a computer with access to the 10,000 most commonly used passwords would also be able to access nearly 5,988,000 accounts without breaking a sweat

In 2016, it was found that more than 50% of people are using 25 of the most common passwords (the list was compiled by Keeper by analyzing 10 million passwords leaked in data breaches)

Question 2

Make your own strong password

Answer 2

So what makes a strong password? A good choice is something that isn’t susceptible to a dictionary or pattern attack. It shouldn’t contain any personal information (i.e. name, birthday, anniversary, etc.) that can easily be tied to the owner, and it should be sufficiently long to make brute force attacks time-consuming. The industry standard is 12 characters to reliably create a strong password

We strongly suggest a 20 character random string of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and punctuation or a paraphrase (a short sentence that includes capitalization and punctuation) of up to 72 characters. Using a password manager, like 1Password, or LastPass to suggest strong passwords is a great option as well

Question 3

Two-factor verfication

Answer 3

Two-factor authentication is a means by which you prove who you are by providing a special code or another bit of information sent to your through a mobile app. Clio works with Google Authenticator.

While the Internet is a trusted medium for hosting critical applications and information, passwords are often a weak link in the chain of security between a web application and a user. Clio’s two-factor authentication option allows subscribers to require that passwords be used in conjunction with a secure PIN delivered to a mobile device or other secondary authentication mechanisms. This means enhanced security for all users, and ensures that a weak or compromised password can’t be used alone to gain access to sensitive data.

All other quality cloud-based products, such as Dropbox, Google, etc., have two-factor available for enforcement. We highly recommend you take advantage of this feature in as many products as possible to ensure that the convenience of the cloud is always secure for you.

Question 4

Other programs you may find useful

Answer 4

• KeePass
• Strong Password Generator
• LastPass
• 1Password (Clio really likes 1Password-it can suggest strong passwords for you, is great for storage, and you can even share passwords with your coworkers)

With the adoption of the best practices and risk-minimization strategies outlined in this course, your data can be trusted to “the Cloud” with an extremely high degree of privacy, security, and availability