The rising star that is Twitter broke a new record last week by becoming the first social networking site to be ruled against by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The ruling came about when numerous accounts were hacked and bogus tweets issued, the most spectacular of which involved the then president-elect Barack Obama offering followers the chance to win $500 worth of gasoline.But how were hackers able to breach security so easily? They used automated password guessing software to gain administrative control of Twitter. The FTC noted that the password was “a weak, lower case, common dictionary word”. Best practice should always be observed in relation to the use of passwords, including requiring that number/letter and upper case/lower case combinations are used (which are harder to crack) and requiring frequent changes. Access rights to personal data, and particularly sensitive data, should be granted only on a “need to know” basis and access should be monitored on an ongoing basis. In addition, laptops and portable media should only be used to store personal or sensitive data where there is a genuine operational requirement and the relevant staff have been authorised to do so, and should always be encrypted.

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