What’s Your Real Computer Security Problem?

I’ve been doing a bunch of speaking lately on family law technology issues. Inevitably, the topic of hosted software on the internet (“the cloud”) comes up. Some lawyer in the crowd raises his or her hand and asks a question about security and the danger of losing data to theft when it’s living outside of your office.

Of course, they’re right to be concerned. Data security is a real issue and it’s important that your vendor take appropriate action to protect your data. We’re all familiar with the breaches that have taken place in all sorts of organizations. It’s unfortunate, but probably unavoidable. Theft is going to happen and it happens to data in secure data centers and in lawyers’ offices.

The real danger isn’t lax security by software vendors. The real danger is that your employees are likely using ridiculous passwords. In a recent study of 32 million passwords by RockYou.com there were plenty of common and predictable passwords.

Check out the 10 most frequent ones – then talk with your people and remind then that the following should never be used:

1. 123456 (290,731 users)
2. 12345 (79,078 users)
3. 123456789 (76,790 users)
4. Password (61,958 users)
5. Iloveyou (51,622 users)
6. Princess (35,231 users)
7. Rockyou (22,588 users)
8. 1234567 (21,726 users)
9. 12345678 (20,553 users)
10. abc123 (17,542 users)

Before you get yourself worked up in a lather about cloud computing, do some checking about basic security issues like passwords. The cloud will be a much safer place when we get serious about our passwords. Got that, Princess?

Related articles:

1. 3 Dumbest Computer Things You Can Do
2. The Biggest Security Vulnerability for Law Firms
3. Mindless Computer Security
4. Security Breaches and The Slacker
5. Quick and Easy Email Security for Lawyers