The past few days have been back to back busy in preparation for a number of important discussions and presentations (no name dropping here), so I’ve been lax in posting this week.
The Microsoft Customer Service Site provides assistance on non-technical issues such as product purchases, subscriptions, online services, product information and details on Microsoft education and certification programs.
There’s a good article that was recently posted on on the Microsoft Security At Home web site that outlines how to create strong passwords.
Why should you care? Because last year InformationWeek reported that simple passwords created using short, simple key sequences can be easily cracked:
“For example, a lowly P3 PC running a widely available cracking tool at just 500 MHz was able to guess the password “ChEcK12” in only 26 seconds; and today’s top-of-the-line PCs could perform the same crack almost instantly. (For more examples of just how quickly simple password techniques like this can be bypassed, see this page from McMaster University). It’s scary stuff.”
The article from the Security At Home web site recommends six steps to creating a strong, memorable password:
1. Think of a sentence that you can remember. (see more on “passphrases” below)
2. Check if the computer or online system supports the passphrase directly.
3. If the computer or online system does not support passphrases, convert it to a password.
4. Add complexity by mixing uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers.
5. Finally, substitute some special characters and symbols for common letters.And last: Step 6. When you’re done, you can test your new password with Password Checker, a non-recording feature the Microsoft.Com site that tests the strength of your as you type.
I like the suggestion of using a passphrase which when used as a password is as long as the phrase is in number of characters. As the Wiki notes, passphrases are usually longer than a password, with 20 to 30 characters typical of many passphrases, “making some kinds of brute force attacks entirely impractical. Second, if well chosen, they will not be found in any phrase or quote dictionary.”
So, passphrase of “MydogSpotisblackandwhite” may be better than “mydogspot.” Again, InformationWeek suggests that passphrases can be more secure “because they’re made of a series of words rather than totally random characters, they’re much easier to remember than conventional passwords of similar length.”
More information:
Tags: Microsoft, passwords, password, passphrase, security.
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For Friday reading: Seth Godin writes this week about the unwritten rule 3 on Stew Leonard’s famous granite rock:
“If the customer is wrong, they’re not your customer any more.”
This is going in a review deck I’m working on for next week.
I agree that when you treat a customer like they’re wrong, they’ll walk away from your product and tell two friends, and they’ll tell two friends… you get the picture. You only have so many chances to help a customer out, and turn around their perceptions. And if you don’t, you risk alienating them.
Seth is worth reading regularly.
Tags: customer service, customers, seth godin.
TechWeb’s Desktop Pipeline has published their Top 10 Windows XP Tips…
“With Vista at least seven months away, we’ll all be using Windows XP for some time to come. So why not make the most of it? Here’s our all-time favorite Win XP hacks, tips, tricks, and fixes.”
An interesting list, with my favorites being 1, 2, and 5. (with apologies to Monty Python)
Don’t miss TweakUI, which I’m surprised did not make it into the Top Ten list (but is in the bonus tips)…
Download TweakUI. Microsoft’s downloadable suite of PowerToys includes one of our favorite utilities: TweakUI. This handy app gives you a plethora of ways to customize Windows XP, including changing the location of the My Music and My Documents folders, adjusting Windows’ appearance, altering the contents of the Start Menu, and more. It’s at least 10 tips in one!
My favorite part of the article recalls The Robot’s dialogue from “Lost in Space,” with the heading “Danger, Danger!” A little dramatic, but it calls attention that many items do involve modifications to the Windows Registry.
“Before you jump into the story, a word to the wise: Some of the tips discussed here involve hacking Win XP’s powerful registry. Before you make any registry changes, make sure you back up your existing registry; that way, you’ll be able to restore it in case something gets fouled up.
“Backing up your registry is easy. Simply open RegEdit (click Start > Run, type regedit and click OK), then select File > Export from the main menu. You can export a copy of your registry to any folder on any hard drive in your system. Exporting a copy to the desktop is usually easiest.”
Tags: Microsoft, TweakUI, tips, Windows XP.
OK, one more: this week, Fortune arrived at home with an article on “Microsoft’s new brain” on how Ray Ozzie is making an impression on the company.
The interesting thing is that this comes at a time when we’re seeing incredible innovation in products and services come from so many different parts of the company through 2006 and into next year.
IMHO… this doesn’t come from one person or a single team: it comes from the so many places that teams mapped out prior to Ozzie’s arrival, which he and othger top managers have helped codify across the various players and product groups. And it comes from the additional horsepower upstairs and the excellent management instilled across the three divisions. This and many more things happening at many different levels has helped the company kick a much better “better together” strategy into gear.
This from the same issue where Fortune cover states that the boom in the Internet is back. I didn’t know it was gone…just steadily increasing faster than ever. Case in point:
“Driving this transformation is the extraordinary growth in the number of people with access to high-speed Internet connections. In 2000 just five million Americans had fast Internet access at home. At the end of 2005 that figure was 73 million, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project.”
Tags: Microsoft, Ray Ozzie, internet access.