Information: the Key to Effective Solutions
It’s no surprise that a great deal of focus is put on protecting information. The software and hardware market today offers a number of solutions for restricting access to information and preventing information leaks: tools for controlling access and authentication, systems meant to prevent attacks, backup programs, antivirus applications, and more.
But the simplest and most accessible tool for any user is still password protection, which helps prevent unauthorized access to systems, documents and databases. We have all used a pass-word to access our work system and to view databases, etc.
We know that man is the weakest link in the information chain – and problems with password protection are no exception. How many times have you forgotten one password or another. But that's completely understandable, given the number of passwords the average computer user is expected to memorize.
But if a password is lost for any reason, it means access to information is also lost.
Access Denied...
Data about sales and cash flows, client databases, accounting and management reports, analytical reports and forecasts – all of it is information that is necessary for running a business successfully for taking key strategic decisions about business development.
As a rule, most of this kind of information is not accessible without a password. This is a basic security policy for any company. But what happens when access to certain data is crucial, but the password is unknown? This kind of situation happens all the time.
First of all, you might have forgotten the password. It’s happened to all of us. You’re rational and you didn't write it down on the last page of your calendar – you knew you would remember it with a simple association. For example, your favorite food and the year you were born in. You won’t likely forget your year of birth, but your favorite food is another issue. After that vacation you took in Crete, you can think of nothing but Greek salads. But Greek salads are not getting you authorized in the system.
Sometimes it happens that a certain sales manager leaves the company without giving the password for viewing reports to anyone. There's no way to contact her yet, since she has decided to finally realize her life dream and go on a 90-day tour of Tibet. Counter parties are threatening to terminate your contract if you can't pay them immediately, but you don't have the data behind the deal and you don’t know the details. Sound like a familiar situation?
Employees are sometimes fired for participating in financial schemes or working with a competi-tor. In these cases, there is no sense in expecting that person to willingly share the password to his documents. But you need to get your hands on the data, urgently.
The problem is clear: in order go gain access to information and take on today's business tasks, you're going to need to be able to restore lost passwords. The good news? In most cases, it can be done.
How Do You Solve This Puzzle?
All About Passwords
Lost passwords have been a problem since the invention of password protection, and software developers have been addressing this problem for some time now. As a result, there are several software password recovery solutions on the market today.
However, let’s take a look at the methods these software programs use to solve the lost pass-word problem. For starters, let's examine the different kinds of passwords that are used and what kind of additional information might be useful when searching for a password.
In general, a password can include the following symbols: 26 lowercase letters (a through z), 26 uppercase letters (A through Z), 10 digits (0 through 9), and 33 other symbols (!@#$%^, etc.) – that gives us a total of 95 symbols that can be used in any combination. In some cases, the other special symbols are excluded, which reduces the number of possible password variations. Passwords can also be different lengths, which can be a crucial factor when a password can only be identified via a scan and cannot be restored or deleted.
Furthermore, knowledge of human psychology can actually be a big help when searching for a password.
