I saw a post on LinkTipIdea the other day about making strong and memorable passwords and it got me to thinking: There are tons of professionals today who have sensitive information stored on their computers and yet keep their passwords right out in the open (sometimes even using sticky notes attached to the computer itself!). This is a dangerous practice, as you never know who is going to be coming and going from your office.

It may seem like a pain to remember your password, especially if you have to use special characters (such as $, !, etc). However, there are ways around this problem (as read in the articles referenced above). One technique that I use is to replace common letters with special characters that I can easily remember. For example, replacing “S” with “$”. This makes your password not only easy to remember, but much more complex.

Remember: The possible consequences of having your password revealed far outweigh the effort required to keep your password secure.

In a previous tip of the day I talked about how it was necessary to lock your desktop when you were away.  On a similar page is the concept of physically locking up your laptop using your “laptop lock”.  This is usually a cord that you can loop through a secure holder on your desk and then “lock” to your computer via a key and lock port on your laptop.  Believe it or not, laptop theft is a serious problem in the workplace, so if your laptop is at your desk it should be locked up at all times.  These things can be VERY expensive to replace and you better believe your company is coming after your paycheck if it is stolen and you didn’t have it locked up.