Freebee Friday: Protecting Passwords

Because privacy is critical to a district’s digital infrastructure, having strong passwords is crucial. A group at the Georgia Institute of Technology that includes Richard Boyd, Joshua Davis and Carl Mastrangelo used a bunch of inexpensive off-the-shelf graphics cards recently cracked typical eight character passwords in less than two hours. They think that a 12-character password is a good balance between security and convenience today. It would take them more than 17,000 years to break. Reading the report is a real eye-opener for any district IT administrator.