CCBR Business Review

20 B U S I N E S S T I P S What makes a good password? How to Really Love Selling Before getting into the topic, think of this; you have often been recommended to use a password of 8 characters using a combi- nation of upper case, lower case and num- bers, right? Well, these days, with the right, easily obtained technology, a hacker will guess that password within an hour! A password is like a needle in a haystack. The haystack is the number of password combinations, and the needle is your pass- word. Password strength calculations are based on the pool of usable characters you can use; being 10 numbers, 26 lowercase let- ters, 26 uppercase letters and 33 symbols or special characters; 95 is the total number of characters you can use in passwords. If you have a password length of 8, your possible password combinations are 95^8 which is a touch over 6.6 quadrillion pos- sible combinations. That seems pretty strong. However, At the current rates in hacker’s apps, this, by today’s standards, makes for a weak password. In order to make your password com- putationally infeasible to guess, we need to use complex and long passwords. The current recommendation for passwords is at least 16 characters long and to incorpo- rate upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. The formula then becomes 95^16 meaning it would take an average of 211.5 billion centuries to guess your password. A secure password requires complex- ity, length and randomness. Hackers will employ a number of different methods in order to guess your password. A hacker will first attempt a “dictionary attack”- a prede- termined list of words which can be either strung together or modified to substitute characters. Humans are bad at remember- ing random combinations so people will mostly use a word, combination of words with numbers or symbols at the end. Hackers know this so they will try these techniques first. They can then apply ‘brute force’ by trying every single combination in the password pool. The longer and more complex a password, the longer the brute force will take. On the Dark Web, there are archives of common passwords which have been exfil- trated from server breaches that happen every day. If your password has been leaked by one of these data breaches, your pass- Michael Trimblett word may well be on one of these lists. This demonstrates that using the same password on multiple websites is also bad practice. So, to recap; you should use a password of 16 characters or more, (upper, lowercase letters, numbers and symbols); It should be random AND you should use a unique password for EVERY website you visit. I know what you are thinking “I can’t remember that many random passwords”. You may not be able to, but a password manager can. Learn more on password managers in the Cyber Security Business Connect and Protect Central Coast premium member- ship at cybersecurity.loyalit.com.au . About Michael Trimblett Michael has been in the I.T. industry since 1998 and is currently the General Manager of Loyal I.T. Michael holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology, is a Cisco Certified Network Associate, a Microsoft Certified Professional, I.T. Infrastructure Library (ITIL) v3 certified and is a Certified Ethical Hacker. As an Ethical Hacker, Michael has legally hacked over eighty servers where the vulnerable serv- ers suffer from poorly patched operating systems, poor internal security policies, poor passwords and poorly programmed software, amongst other vulnerabilities. Michael’s job is to make sure this does not describe your system. Trevor Marchant It doesn't matter if you're selling a prod- uct, a start-up idea, or simply a vision: Selling is not about pitches or closing deals. It's something much simpler. Many people - even some who sell for a living - feel uncomfortable when they're selling, even if they don't share their rea- sons. The reason people feel uncomfortable is they're making the mistake of think- ing of selling as an activity that separates them from what they really enjoy doing. It’s easy to feel that selling is trying to convince people to buy something they don’t want. That’s not selling – that’s ‘ped- dling.’ Selling is about giving and sharing; it’s about finding out what people want and why and it is in my view - passion with purpose. Passion is what happens when you do something that truly interests and excites you. Passion has nothing to do with other people. Indeed, great artists often have a passion for their art that's completely disconnected from whether or not some- body else ever sees or hears it. However, when you ask somebody else to participate in whatever it is that excites and interests you, you're adding a pur- pose to your passion. At that point, whether you realise it or not, you're ‘selling’ because the other per- son must now decide whether to spend their time or money (which are the same thing, really) on whatever makes you excited and interested. For example, suppose you've got a great idea for a product, and you love talk- ing about it, and you're enjoying making that idea into a reality. That's your passion. When you tell somebody else about your idea, or show them the prototype, or ask them to invest in it, that's adding purpose to your passion. The most successful business owners never ‘sell’ as a separate activity and nei- ther do the most successful salespeople. Whether their passion is to change the world or just help people one by one, it's that passion that does the selling. This is not to say that sales skills don't exist, or they aren't valuable…. they are critical and must be learnt because they help you communicate your passion more clearly. So, forget about ‘selling.’ Don't even think about the word if it bothers you. Find what makes you passionate and then give that passion a purpose by inviting other people to become a part of it. How can you not love that? CENTRAL COAST BUSINESS REVIEW JULY 2021