Stronger Passwords for the Masses, by Michael Z. Williamson

This article should be of interest to anyone who is cyber security conscious–which should be everyone, in the present era:

Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore.

Now consider the pointed lesson of the XKCD site.

Are you now concerned? …then use:

Diceware

and

Truecrypt

The main features of Truecrypt:

  • Creates a virtual encrypted disk within a file and mounts it as a real disk. 
  • Encrypts an entire partition or storage device such as USB flash drive or hard drive.
  • Encrypts a partition or drive where Windows is installed (pre-boot authentication).
  • Encryption is automatic, real-time (on-the-fly) and transparent.
  • Parallelization and pipelining allow data to be read and written as fast as if the drive was not encrypted.
  • Encryption can be hardware-accelerated on modern processors.
  • Provides plausible deniability, in case an adversary forces you to reveal the password:
  • Hidden volume (steganography) and hidden operating system.

Take the time to increase your password security and your general computing security. Someday you may be very glad that you did!

Thanks, – Michael Z. Williamson (SurvivalBlog’s Editor at Large)