Greetings!

Just a quick update. I’ve just finished an article on motivational posters and their use in a home office (or not for that matter).

The concept of putting motivational posters around your home office might seems a little cheesy. Worse again it might even remind you of those awful days when you were surrounded by those God awful company slogans, mission statements and their own………

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Hope you enjoy it

Niall

Hi again, 

And now onto part two of our series of blogs on passwords. If I don’t post this now while I’m thinking of it I’ll forget for about 2 days

I’ve worked in IT management and IT support over the years. The one thing that never ceased to amaze me was how careless people were with their passwords. They had a real ’so what’ attitude to the whole concept of security. If it didn’t affect their lives then they simply didn’t care. That was unti one of two things happened:

1. They forgot their password and needed it reset

2. Their system was compromised because they’d used a “weak” password.

What do I mean by weak password? Believe it or not many people use “password” as their password. Or their first name or words like love, their hobby, the deparment they work in etc. All of the above are crazy choices – they’re far too easy to guess!

There’s 5 basic tips you need for creating a great password and here they are:
1. Your password must be alphanumeric. That simply means a mixture of numbers and letters such as xpf2778z. Why? When a hacker tries to break into a system they often use what are called dictionary or brute force hacks. A dictionary hack is an application that simply uses standard words and word combinations in an attempt to guess your password. In our previous example of “password” being used as the password a brute force or disctionary hack would guess this in seconds. Using alphanumeric passwords increases the number of possible password combinations by millions.

2. It should be 6 – 8 characters in length. The longer the password the harder it is for a hacking program to get around. If your password was abc then there are 6 possible password combinations. If your password was abc123 there are now over 720 password combinations possible. If your password was abc1234 there are now almost 6,000 possible combinations. This is just basic math – the longer the password the more possible combinations there are.

3. Never use personal details in your password. People often use their home address, their age, husband or wives name, their social security number or their date of birth. These are incredibly easy to get access to by either a fellow employee or potential system hacker. Your password needs to be secure and hard to guess. Personal details meet neither of these criteria.

4. 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 ATM pin number in your wallet beside your ATM 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. Obviously burn the piece of paper you jotted your ideas down on.

5. Do not use the same password for more than 180 days. Create several variants of the same password and recycle them every 180 days. This adds an extra layer of security to your data. By recycling your password frequently you make your data 1000% more secure. You’ll notice that most large corporates force their employees to change their password every month (at least) for this exact reason.

Hopefully this will make your job of creating a new password so much easier.

Until the next time

Niall

I’m actually going to split this post into two parts because as I sat there thinking about it I realized there were actually two separate aspects to the whole password issue:

1. Forgetting your password

2. Not creating a secure password in the first place.

I’m going to deal with the problem of forgetting your password first. If you look at the number of passwords people use these days. There are passwords for logging onto your computer, passwords for your online banking, email, websites and so on and so forth. Too many passwords and not enough time eh?

This problem need never arise if all companies/banks etc would simply allow you to change your password to something you could remember. This isn’t the case – some of them insist on providing passwords that are so cryptic that a mathematician would have difficulty remembering them.

The solution is to write you passwords down right? No no no! Stop. Never, ever write your passwords down. It’s identity theft suicide!

So what is the answer? Some people use an Excel spreadsheet (I used to). Others keep their passwords in a rolodex (such a bad idea I won’t dwell on it) and others just hope their memory preserves their passwords perfectly. None of these are a good idea.

For me personally I use a program called Roboform. It allows me to store all my passwords securely and then whenever a website asks for a password then Roboform can enter it automatically. I use dozens of different websites as part of my business and I’d be truly lost without this program.

It also has a neat little feature that can generate random and secure passwords for you. A great little program that anybody who uses the ‘net either for business or personal use.

Talk to you again soon.

Niall

Hi folks,

I was just checking the stats for the site and it appears that there’s a whole pile of new HomeOfficeBuddy fans so I just wanted to take a moment and say hello and welcome you the the site and the blog!

Yup I’ve been quiet for the last few days but that’s because I had some business stuff to do that I’d been dodging for ages (you know the way) and I finally had to bite the bullet and just sit down and get it done. It’s done now (15 minutes ago to be exact) so I said I’d best say hello to my new buddies

I’ll post again shortly on a topic near and dear to my heart

Be good

Niall 

This posting is one of those random streams of thought I’ve had based on an ongoing debate in a forum I visit. The forum is for people who make or want to make a living online and the recent activity of one of the people using the forum just stuck out quite badly. Why? Because of the level of negativity she seems to exude. It just seems to come pouring out of her and the more the argument rages the more she seems to ‘get off’ on the whole experience.

It just made me think. She’s spent hours on this forum being negative, nasty and downright spiteful. The entire argument on the forum was based on a vicious comment she made about the site owner. This bothered me for a lot of reasons.

Why?

This lady (?) had sat down and spent at least 30 minutes putting together pure poison to post on this forum. That’s 30 minutes from her day to do that. She knew in advance that her post would incite a huge row on the forum and create a very negative environment. Yet she still did it. Deep inside her somewhere it makes her feel good to put together a negative attack on somebody else – a person who has only ever offered her help. There are no benefits to her actions – only negatives. She can’t and won’t see this.

Then I got to thinking. How much do we all let negativity control our actions each day? Or our thoughts? How often do we let negative thoughts and feelings take hold and get us down?

How often do we focus on the negative stuff in our lives and forget the positives? How often do we focus on the negative aspects of others and not try to see their positives?

When I thought about it today it struck me that we all do this more than we want to. Focusing on negatives makes us feel bad. It demotivates us and drags us down.

So what can you do about this? The next time you’re beginning a negative thought process or pattern stop yourself. Mentally, emotionally and if needs be physically stop yourself and pick one good thing in your life and focus on that instead. If you have trouble finding one good thing in your life then pick something good you want in your life and focus on that instead. Focusing on anything and I mean ANYTHING other than the negative stuff is where you want your heart, mind and soul.

There are those people in the world who get off on being negative. They love finding fault in others. Let them be. They’re wasting their own lives and happiness. Don’t let them waste yours.

Here endeth the sermon
Niall

Your stationery can quickly become the face of your business. Your business cards and letterheads all give people a specific impression of your business when they first see them. Many new businesses place a huge amount of focus on developing their color schemes, logos etc. I recently saw a marketing exec spend an entire month approving fonts, typefaces and layouts.

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