In this episode, Birgit Pauli-Haack and Jim O’Reilley discuss the latest Tech Updates and begin to address data security including protecting your computer and mobile devices, and then a little about WordPress security.

Birgit starts with describing the Cloudflare bug which affected many of us. She then describes how a vulnerable WordPress plugin, NextGEN Gallery, affected millions of users worldwide. This past week Sucuri published an article about a serious SQL injection and recommended that users immediately update their plugin. Matt Mullenweg offered some suggestions about WordPress security this past week. Last week Birgit co-hosted a WordPress Meetup which featured Chris Wiegman, an expert on WordPress security, the full presentation is shown below.

Jim and Birgit then discuss the first security issue of the day as faced by a user: passwords. Since a computer can be programmed to guess a password 1,000 times a second the time for difficult to figure out passwords has passed and difficult to crash passwords are now the best idea. They then discuss two-factor authorization (2FA) and why that is a significant advantage to one who is protecting their data.

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