At this point, everyone has probably heard a speech about how important it is to have a strong password. It is true that a strong password is extremely important in preventing an attacker from guessing or cracking it. However, it does not help against those annoying and ever-present phishing attacks when a user unknowingly hands over their password. And unfortunately, it’s almost inevitable that this will happen. This means that there will always be a question about the security of a password.

Let’s just say there’s a lot to learn from history without quoting Sun Tzu… again. Especially in information and cybersecurity. While much of the birth of cyber realm revolves around the military - many of the members of our community are current or former members of various armed forces - many of us still refer to the military influence of old when working through our business planning and various actions revolving around cybersecurity. A great example is the common use or reference to Boyd’s OODA (Observe–Orient–Decide–Act) loop flow chart in both attack and defensive security applications. In sticking to a military theme, I want to touch on a story from World War II and its applicability in today’s modern cybersecurity world.

Cybersecurity breaches are becoming more and more prevalent. In fact, it’s been estimated that there were almost 5 billion records breached in 2018. Many organizations spend thousands of dollars on security breach prevention tools, but won’t take the time to create a formal process of identifying, responding to, and communicating an incident.

If you’re reading this, it’s very likely that you know how to use the internet. It’s also likely you’ve made an account on the internet somewhere. When you created your last account, what kind of requirements were you forced to use? For a number of web services, these requirements still follow the 2003 NIST SP 800-63 Appendix A standards that recommend an 8-character minimum, containing one uppercase, one lowercase, one digit, and one special character (Ex: Procircular1!).

Let’s take a look at an often under-utilized aspect of network topology in the small to medium business realm: that’s right, a networking article. But before you run off, what if I told you you could increase performance and lower your production down time with equipment you (might) already have!?