Archive for the ‘Security Article’ Category:
Simple rule to make your password secure
If someone asked you how secure your Password is, would you be able to answer without worrying if it really is? There are certain specific guidelines you need to follow to choose a safe and secure password. Use the following tips as a how to on making your password secure dan safe.
1. Do not write your password down anywhere.
Keeping a record of your password for somebody to find is as dangerous as keeping a copy of your pin number in your wallet beside your card. Create a memorable password that you’ll have no problem recalling. This is not as hard as it sounds and if you jot some password ideas down you’ll quickly come up with some good ones.
2. It should be 8 – 10 characters in length.
The longer the password the harder it is for a hacking program to get around. If your password was 123 then there are six possible password combinations.
3. Do not use the same password for more than 60 days.
Try to Create several variants of the same password and change them every 60 – 70 days. This adds an extra layer of security to your personal files.
Hopefully these tips will help you choose and securing your password.
How to Showing Hidden And Password Protected Files
By Sam Miller
Getting Windows to show the hidden files on the PC is pretty straight forward; here are the sequences of Windows clicks and options you need to follow to get up the hidden files:
1. In Windows Explorer, (for this select “Start”=>”All Programs”=>”Windows Explorer”)
2. Select “Tools” and go to “Folder Options”
3. Click on the “View” tab
4. On the “Hidden files and folders” tab, click on “Show hidden files and folders”
It’s as simple as that!
Windows hides some files because it doesn’t want the occasional user interacting with them or indeed accidentally deleting them and causing a system crash or an application not to run. This makes a lot of sense from a personal and business users point of view.
There are also some circumstances when you will purposely hide files because they contain confidential information such as financial details or personal data that you do not want made public.
The question is though, what happens when you forget where you’ve put them?
After all, these files are hidden precisely so they cannot be easily found, and what do you do if they are password protected?
First of all let’s deal with cracking passwords that protect files and applications. You may be surprised to learn that there are a large number of software tools that are freely available from the internet that will crack any Windows based password that is applied to an application, folder or file. These common shareware or freeware utilitiy programs include Protected Storage Viewer (just put those three words in your search engine and you’ll find the download) and this utility will open and acquire the characters that a Windows based application or file will usually represent as the asterisks when the password input field is being used (when you type “password” it is shown as “*******”). This is a pretty neat tool for when you’ve mislaid or lost your password and it doesn’t need any external installation or complicated setup routine to get it working on password recovery. Even better is that this utility will work on Windows applications such as Outlook, Internet Explorer and MSN, basically if you are dealing with a Windows environment it will do the business for you.