Data leaks – incidents where unauthorized people have gained access to data collections – happen again and again. To prevent user passwords from being compromised in such a case, it is important that they are not simply stored in plain text. Instead, they should always be stored only “hashed”. This article explains which hash functions are suitable for this purpose.

APTs have a lot of media coverage, especially when a well-known organization became its victim and the resulting damage is huge. However, the threats most companies face on a daily basis were not deployed by powerful organizations but by common cyber criminals that are mostly interested in earning money not knowledge. This article gives advice on effective countermeasures.