Well ladies and gentlemen, I don’t think I mind telling you right here and now that we’re in our final days.

Granted, we’re all in our final days from the day we’re born.  The only difference is just how many days are involved for any of the sacks of scented meat which actively participate in the human experience.

Scented, sentient, take your pick.

Even still, it’s a couple of different indicators which bring me to the blue walled bloggery this morning to whip my readership up into a fluffy, airy froth.

First and foremost, the blue walls of the chamber from which I dispatch harsh epitaphs about the infestations of a culture which has successfully reinvigorated typhus is getting few new coats of paint.

Daylight savings time, I haven’t forgotten about you.

That’s right people.  I’m in the process of painting my office.

The previous color which heretofore will be referred to as the base coat and the reason for so many new coats, is a high gloss royal blue.  It went on about 13 years ago at the behest of the pre-teen who occupied these quarters and made it his own for the following 6 years.

The room has a vaulted ceiling and a significant ledge in it which up until last week housed an eclectic collection of balled up socks, Legos, tennis balls, and that Nightwing actual figure which mysteriously disappeared years ago.  

Welcome back Mr. Grayson. 

The new flavor going on the walls sports the moniker of Iced Mocha.  Granted, after smearing a couple of coats of the new stuff on the wall without laying down a significant base coat of primer, the Iced Mocha on top of the high gloss royal blue looks as if I had the good people at Earl Scheib mix in a few tablespoons of Metamucil just to add a sense of unpredictability.

It’s almost as if I’ve achieved new level of bilirubin in here. 

Anyway, it’s halfway done and the smell from the first few coats still lingers after a few days.  The remaining shiny blue walls are where my desk is set up, so I’ll need to do some additional prep work to insure my monitors don’t take on a certain shade of Metamucil infused Iced Mocha when all is said and done.

Once the painting is complete, I’m going to rip up the carpet and replace it with something that isn’t so vocal about broadcasting the evidence of various digestive indiscretions the dogs committed in their youth.

At least I hope it was the dogs and not the previous occupant.

Naturally, the final days of the blue walled bloggery is not the only indicator that brings me here today.

I’ve just about had it with data security.

There, I said it.

One of the reasons data security has sent me phishing for a measuring spoon and the container of Metamucil is because of its introduction into my life here at home and at work.

See what I just did there?

There’s not even a red squiggly line under that word suggesting that I used it incorrectly.

Here at home, the password management software has changed as a result of one company bumping uglies with another.  The resulting product does not strike me as being as good as it was before, even though it has more stringent features that endeavor to keep my passwords as secure as possible. 

Most notable is a multi-factor authentication feature which refuses to trust the fact that you are you and you’ve entered the master password correctly the first time.  Just to follow up, the program sends a request for authentication of your efforts to a secondary device and requests your acknowledgement from there.

So if I want to access my password software on my PC to change my password for Joe30330, I have to receive and approve the access request on a app on my phone before  I can make the requisite change. 

But wait.  There’s more.

Efforts have ramped up at work in recent years to insure that we’re protecting our data to the fullest extent that we can.  Just as a reminder, I work for a financial services institution where we house all types of customer data, including their tax identification numbers. 

We’re required to take a refresher course every year on how to protect our data.  Don’t stop there though.  We get tested on a regular basis.

First of all, there’s a department in the company that creates scam emails and sends them to me and my colleagues 3-4 times a year.  It’s up to us the recipients to either take the bait or report the email as fraudulent.

It’s kind of like recognizing the signs of someone who is choking and knowing what to do.  When email comes in, it’s up to us to recognize when things look a little hinky and act accordingly.

But wait.  There’s more.

That same department involved with creating those fake emails which are designed to grab information they’re not supposed to have has another initiative.

These people also spend time trying to guess our network passwords too.  They go out to the internet and look for any of our digital footprints on social networking and whatever else is out there in the digital ether to find the names of our spouses, kids, pets, and favorite members of the Little Rascals whose monikers could serve as less than imaginative passwords.  They then use elaborate permutations of those names with our birthdays or other significant dates to guess what our network password is.

Sometimes they nail it.  On the times that they don’t, they send you a note congratulating you on the strength of your password.  In the same note, they then have the gall to tell you about the elements of a strong password.

Let that sink in for a moment.

“We couldn’t guess your password, so you’re doing it right.  Here’s how to do it right.”

So here’s the problem that will eventually develop with password security as I see it.

As it is right now, the trend seems to involve creating a sentence that’s long enough and unique enough that it can’t really be gleaned from a search on the internet.

Just for example, start with “This password security stuff is so stupid”.

The next thing you do is to remove the spaces and incorporate some numbers and symbols.

Changes some of the letters to numbers or symbols.  Work in some misspellings.  “I” becomes “1”, “E” becomes “3”, “a” becomes “@”, “O” becomes “0”, and “s” becomes “5”.

By doing that, you now have “Th15P@55w0rd53cur1tee5tuff15So5t00pid”.

The problem I see is that such an algorithm is a pretty common approach.  Data security agents and thieves alike are bound to figure out a crack for this approach in years to come.  As such, we’ll have to incorporate special symbols from Sanskrit,  Esperanto, or even Double Dutch into our passwords just so malcontents can’t get into our Netflix account and change the list of movies we want to watch.

Give it time.  It will happen.

Speaking of “it will happen”, it’s now time for me to finish up the walls in here.

M3t@muci1Inf00s3d1c3dM0ch@OnH1ghGlo55Bl00