Network Computing is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them. Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Qualys Adds Two-Factor Authentication To Service: Page 2 of 2

With weak passwords, hackers can use software that rapidly generates passwords to guess the right one. "The combination of poor passwords and automated attacks means that in just 110 attempts, a hacker will typically gain access to one new account every second or a mere 17 minutes to break into 1000 accounts," Imperva stated.

The report passed on security recommendations from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA): Passwords should contain at least eight characters; they should contain a mix of numbers, upper- and lower-case letters and special characters such as #%&*; and should not be a name, a slang expression or "any word in a dictionary."

Qualys announced the availability of the VIP Authentication Service to its QualysGuard enterprise customers at RSA Conference Europe 2010, a computer security convention held this week in London.