In August, the Senate voted down the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 with a vote of 52-46, just shy of the 60 votes it needed to pass. The bill was an effort to ensure hackers couldn’t gain access to the computer networks of private companies. The types of businesses that would have been affected by the bill included any that contained “critical infrastructure,” which means that access to the company’s assets could lead to the halt of life-sustaining services (such as food, energy, or water), widespread economic damage, or the degradation of national security capabilities in general.

Below are a few things any business can do to improve its security now :

1. Translate Security Answers to Another Language
2. Start Passwords with a Space
3. Don’t Depend on Just AES 256 Encryption
4. Do not use NTLM if the Underlying Protocol is Insecure
5. Use Drive Encryption Software
6. Create the Right Strong Password


Creating a strong password is more than just using a longer password or replacing letters with similar-looking numbers. The reason that some passwords take longer to crack is because the “key space” (number of possible permutations) is larger if a password is longer.