PPB November 2017

TECH TALK What’sThe P@$3W0r&? Complicated password rules make us less likely to follow them. The key to security, it turns out, is simple creativity. The National Institute of Standards and Technology(NIST) lit a fire under IT managers with its 2003 guidelines, which called for computer passwords to contain a mix of letters, numbers and special characters, to be updated every 90 days. But it overwhelmed the average user, who often ended up forgoing the complicated combinations for passwords that could easily be compromised. In the wake of newly issued NIST guidelines on passwords, the author of the original rules now says he regrets advising complex passwords. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal , retired employee Bill Burr said the rules were based on a then 20-year- old white paper, since there was no empirical data on password security to work from. The NIST’s latest rules, issued in June, now recommend creating passwords out of long, easily recalled phrases. These types of passwords have been shown by computer- security specialists to take longer to crack than passwords crafted of a mishmash of letters, numbers and characters. Also important is the frequency with which passwords should be changed. Studies have found that changing passwords more often leads to users creating weaker passwords each time. The bottom line? Designing a password that’s less complex, and changing it less often, is more secure. by Jen Alexander BRANDABLE View FromThe Top Far-flung Faroe Islands take a page from Google Maps to show the company what it’s missing. While the Faroe Islands are among the most picturesque destinations in northern Europe, their location between Iceland and northwest Scotland makes traveling there as much of an adventure as being there. So remote is the semi-autonomous Denmark territory that it didn’t show up on Google Street View—until recently. In 2016, a member of the islands’ tourism agency, Visit Faroe Islands, wanted to show what Google users were missing out on, so she set out to document the Faroes herself—with the help of some woolly residents. Sheep View 360 enlisted five sheep to wear solar-powered 360-degree view cameras as they roamed the countryside with their 70,000 brethren. The images were collected and uploaded to Google Street View, capturing five locations for viewers to “tour.” Google took notice, and sent Visit Faroe Islands a truck and more 360-degree cameras, which were lent to tourists through the agency and Atlantic Airways to capture more images and provide updates to the map. Google SHEEP View, as it came to be called, received a gold Clio Award this year, in the Medium Innovation category. More importantly, the campaign drew more than 42,000 mentions on the internet and gained an audience of two billion. | NOVEMBER 2017 | 63 THINK