Keeping An Eye On The Barbarians At The Gate

We talk a lot about password security here and why it is important to use strong passwords and how to update and manage them, but sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. To that end, check out this log report designed to record attempted login hack attempts:

This report includes more than 3000 records detailing nearly 10,000 failed attempts over a period of a few weeks at InsideTheArts.com and from a comparative perspective, this is child’s play. These are just garden variety brute force attempts but you can see from this insanely long list just how many fracking barbarians out there want to hack your organization’s website.

At the risk of sounding like an alarmist, this isn’t going to get any better any time soon; instead, it is the new normal so do yourself a favor and make sure you take password security seriously because once they get in, you also become an even bigger magnet for future attacks.

Fortunately, you can brush aside this nonsense by making sure all of your website admins maintain strong passwords and less than obvious usernames (i.e. no admin users with the username “admin”). Here are a pair of articles that walk you through understanding what goes into a strong password and pointing you toward tools that help whittle down those alphanumeric mountains into manageable mole hills.

[ilink url=”https://adaptistration.com/blog/2013/01/25/eliminate-password-fail-time-suck-once-and-for-all/”]Password management made easy.[/ilink]

[ilink url=”https://adaptistration.com/blog/2012/06/04/change-your-password-already/”]How to create a strong password.[/ilink]