Sophos Cloud Optix
In this week’s Naked Security Live video, we investigate at the story of a US family whose Nest security camera warned them of “incoming nuclear missiles” – cue 5 minutes of understandable panic!
We tell you how you to avoid a similar cyberincident in your home:
(Watch directly on YouTube if the video won’t play here.)
PS. Like the shirt in the video? They’re available at: https://shop.sophos.com/
Nicely done Paul!
One question about passwords; What are you thoughts on using three random words for passwords? This is something that is recommended to UK companies that wish to achieve “Cyber Essentials” certification by the NCSC.
I guess my question really should be; why is #ThreeRandomWords not something you advise in your video and in previous articles?
We do mention choosing *four* random words in the video (in the style of XKCD’s famous correct horse battery staple cartoon). But we note very strongly that they have to avoid any connection, either with you or each other.
I’ve never myself been a fan of “N random words” because I suspect most people simply won’t or can’t make a truly random pick from the dictionary. And I think three words is asking for trouble because most people know about 10,000 words, most of which they see and use very rarely, and because we tend to think of and to recall words in well-known combinations – thus randomness becomes tricky to achieve manually. Even if I am trying really hard I am much more likely to choose a phrase like “curious green ideas” than to open the dictionary at random and get “zymurgy Constantinople undertaker”.
So I recommend passwords derived in some way from letters plucked from much longer phrases used as mnemonics, or a password manager.
I suppose that Her Majesty’s Government was thinking that owt’s better than nowt, and therefore even “bring it on” makes a better password than “rover”. My own opinion is that if you choose three “random” words for 20 or 30 different passwords you will inadvertently end up with a surprisingly non-random selection from a surprisingly small pool of candidates.
If you buy the shirt in the video do you get a free Duck with it? If so that must be a bargain!