Maki & Brian DeLaet EduCyber founders

Is Your Password Secure?

Do you have a secure password? As technology advances, so does the definition of what is secure. Not too long ago, a six character password with a number or special character was considered to be pretty secure. Now that has gone up to at least eight (try signing up for a Microsoft Passport and you'll see what I mean).

Then there are the experts that say you should change your password at least every 90 days. In the corporate world the IT department can enforce (or at least make a reasonable attempt at enforcing) tough password policies. If we tried to do that with our small business clients, we'd likely find ourselves with fewer clients. Too many hats. Too much to do. I don't need the hassles of trying to think of another password. Besides which, such enforcement usually leads to employees writing the password and leaving it close by. Such as taped to the monitor. Or the clever ones who put it on a piece of tape on the back of their keyboards.

So what is a person to do? Recently several experts in security have begun recommending long passwords that are also easy to remember. Why not have a sentence? “My name is Brian DeLaet ” would be long but is also easy for others to guess. “My nam3 is BriaN DeLaeT” is also pretty easy to remember but is pretty difficult for someone to guess. That password is 23 characters long. It combines numbers, spaces and case changes. A hacker using brute force (such as a powerful computer that can try every combination of 23 characters) would soon give up and look for someone with a shorter password. I'm no mathematician but I know that a 23 character (or space) long password where each character can be one of over 70 different choices (numbers from 0-9, letters from a-z and A-Z, and special characters such as spaces or punctuation) makes for pretty astronomical odds.

So as you consider your password policy for your network, consider making the passwords very long with a few deviations from a regular sentence.

Boost Your Web Site

Is your site getting the number of visits you'd like to see? Here are a few tips to help you increase the number of people coming to your site:

1. Make sure that every piece of advertising that leaves your office has your web site displayed prominently.
2. Ask your clients and vendors to link to your web site and also create a link from your site to theirs.
3. Make sure that your site is listed in the big search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL. If it isn't already listed, follow the links to add your site.
4. Make sure that you use keywords on your site that others are likely to search for. For example the EduCyber site is careful to use words like website design and computer network on many pages so that it makes potential customers easy to find us.
5. If you really want to make sure you're getting not only more but targeted traffic, you can try a pay-per-click campaign such as Google's Adwords Program .

If you have questions about any of these tips or don't want to bother with them yourself, call EduCyber at 720-275-4646.

How Much?

Do you know how much your home is worth? Have you built up a lot of equity? Zillow can help you answer these questions and is a great research tool if you are selling or buying a home. Located at www.zillow.com , you can type in your address and voila – you find out how much your home is worth. It's useful for searching in areas because you can easily zoom in and zoom out and “grab” the map with your mouse to move to the next neighborhood.

The information and research doesn't end there though. You can find out how the value has fluctuated (based on several factors including what homes in your neighborhood have sold for) over time. Verify that you are a real person (instead of a computer-bot) by typing in the characters in a picture and you get access to additional information like Property Taxes and comparable homes and their values in your neighborhood.

Whether you're planning to sell, planning to buy, or just simply curious, zillow.com is a useful tool as you get started.

Your Data is Gone!

Do you lie awake at nights worrying about your data? What would happen if you sat down at your computer only to find that the hard drive had died? Would your data still be safe?

The problem with most backup procedures for small businesses is that it involves a manual process. Somebody has to change the tapes or even remember to start the backup program. And if it's manual, it's easy to forget. If you do forget, it undoubtedly happens at the worst time (right before the drive crashes).

EduCyber has teamed with DataPreserve to make such worries a thing of the past. For as little as $15 per month you can backup all of your data online. Simply leave your computer on and the data will be backed up. Think of the worst case scenario. If your building either burned down or was flooded, with an online restore you could be up and running in just an hour or two.

Call 720-275-4646 today for details.

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© 2006 EduCyber, Inc. This newsletter is brought to you by EduCyber, Inc. EduNotes can be viewed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week online at http://www.educyber.com/edunotes/ . Visit us on the web at http://www.educyber.com or call us at (720) 275-4646. Permission is hereby granted to redistribute all or part of this newsletter as long as this entire copyright message is included.