Mcs on Saving Passwords and Managing Them

Mcs on Saving Passwords and Managing Them

MANAGING PASSWORDS
Indu Raitani (09BS0000904)
Passwords, a secret word or code used for authentication, to protect one’s computer operating system, mobile phones, cable TV decoders, ATMs etc. A typical computer/laptop user may require passwords for different purposes like logging in into computer accounts, retrieving e-mails from servers, accessing programs, databases, networks, web sites, and even reading the morning news papers. And specially, not to forget, the immense number of social sites like Facebook, Orkut, Bebo, Twitter etc,. And because these passwords are for the purpose of more compellingly authenticating the identity of one’s computing device to another, passwords have significant disadvantages (they may be stolen, spoofed, forgotten, etc.) So, with all these disadvantages managing different passwords may be a cumbersome task.
What actually we see people doing to manage their number of passwords is choosing trivial passwords, to avoid changing their passwords and to write down their passwords or they choose a new password every end of the day or week, which they may not even use frequently and thus have difficulty remembering them. All these behaviors can compromise network security.
Despite all these and many other problems passwords will continue to be very important in near future because:
* Passwords are significantly less expensive to deploy and support than other technologies.
* Other authentication technologies, such as, biometrics, smart cards and hardware tokens, are typically used along with a password or PIN.

There are basically three methods for password management: remembering them yourself, managing them with your web browser, and using password management software. First of all, a safe password management strategy requires that a password should be a combination of letters, numerical and symbols, comprise of uppercase and lowercase letters, be unique for each login account, contain 8 or more characters and reside in...

Similar Essays