Unique Passwords for Internet Accounts

With the widely publicized compromise of 1.2 billion user accounts from almost a half a million different websites, one very popular question is what can the average internet user do to protect themselves.

The common recommendations are straightforward:

• Use long, strong, and complex passwords
• Use different passwords for every website
• Change your passwords often, at least every six months
• Avoid storing sensitive information (passwords, social security numbers, or other identity information) online

These are the same, proactive recommendations that have been made for several years in response to password and credential breaches. However, historically users have been lax. For instance, among users directly affected by a large password attack, one survey found more than 1/3 of those users did not change their password at all. In 2013, the passwords “123456”, “12345678”, “password”, “qwerty”, and “abc123” continued to be the five most common passwords, just as they were in 2012 (see 2013's report here), even after many large, significant, and well publicized password thefts.

The challenge for users continues to be that secure practices are difficult to do, impact their productivity, and make useful resources harder to access anytime, anywhere. Users continue to make the tradeoff towards speed, productivity, ease of use, and universality — even as the risks and costs dramatically increase.

Ohanae believes that total cloud privacy protection is the solution to this epidemic. Although traditional password management is part of cloud privacy protection, it is not enough alone. Cloud privacy protection must include security of the password manager, so that it does not become a single point of failure, where all passwords can be compromised through it. Cloud privacy protection must include authentication that goes beyond a simple password, preferably by using multi-factor authentication to safeguard access to website credentials.Cloud privacy protection must safeguard data as well as credentials — enabling storage of sensitive, identity related data without risk of trickle-down account compromises if that data is accessed without authorization.

The Ohanae suite for Cloud Privacy Protection implements a password management function called Ohanae 1-Tap. Ohanae 1-Tap does not store passwords anywhere (on your device, on Ohanae’s servers, or in the cloud). Passwords are generated dynamically only when they are used, and generated by two factor authentication based on device and passphrase.

Ohanae’s Cloud Privacy Protection encrypts files stored in cloud storage providers — at creation on your device, during transmission across the Internet, and once stored in the cloud storage provider. The data is protected by strong, multi-factor authentication to dynamically generate decryption keys only on use — industrial strength technology to keep sensitive information in your files from the prying eyes of cyber criminals.

Finally, Ohanae knows that users have the need to securely share data with other collaborators, and supports secure transmission and use.

With Ohanae, it’s easy to establish unique, strong, lengthy passwords for every website, change them as often as you’d like, and have those passwords available on every device you use — whether desktop, laptop, or mobile. You can feel secure storing sensitive files online, and sharing them with others. And, in the unlikely event of a compromise, you have the confidence that the breach is limited — to just a single website, or a single cloud storage provider.

We can defeat the cybercriminals of the world and make epic password theft a news story of the past, and complete Cloud Privacy Protection is the way to do it! To get started, download Ohanae from http://www.ohanae.com today!

Password Compromises of Large User Repositories

Today’s breaking news of the theft of eBay’s password and customer database highlights the danger implicit in the favored target of cyber criminals: large corporate repositories with millions of consumer records.

The eBay compromise poses particular business problems for eBay. Some of the highest costs for businesses with data compromise and theft include loss of customer trust and remediation of possible, unauthorized transactions. With eBay’s quick and informative disclosures, and thorough transaction audit, these are challenges that primarily affect eBay.

However, for customers in a breached database, the effects can extend beyond these corporate type of problem. The customer information in the database is a gateway for criminals to additional data. 

First, when passwords are contained in the compromised information, these passwords are often reused as credentials for other websites. A 2013 Ofcom study reported that 55% of users used a single password for the majority of web sites they accessed, only a slight improvement from 60% in 2011.  When passwords are stolen, and combined with other identifying information in the same database (such as user IDs or email addresses), a breach of a single website like eBay can be extended to breaches of a much wider universe of websites for affected consumers.

Second, the compromise of passwords often leads to the critical problem that an attacker can appear to be an authorized user. This lets the attacker gain access to the resources protected by the password. In the case of eBay, this is a user’s auction activity, but it varies depending on the compromised website. For example, a similar breach to a file sync and share website would result in attackers gaining access to user data files stored in the cloud.

Cloud privacy protection requires protecting both login credentials and the data stored in the cloud. Securing login credentials with unique, strong passwords limits exposure to the single compromised website. Securing cloud based data adds a second level of protection, even when the login credentials are compromised, to prevent data loss.