Friday Faves is our weekly blog series highlighting a few select pieces from the REG team’s reading lists. You can catch up on past Friday Faves on the archive

The problem with complex passwords

Anne says: This is not an article about telling you to update your passwords – again! It’s a fascinating problem and what I found engaging with this article was it took the recurring problem of passwords, looked at people’s behaviour and asked questions about why the behaviour wasn’t changing (even with all the information and reasoning why we should).

Ask your colleagues, or friends, what is their approach to passwords. You’re going to get a range of answers but all of them are likely to be accompanied by some kind of reaction about how painful password management is. Well, this article describes the problem – why we find it hard to use complex passwords, why we like to reuse our favourite ones, and our reactions when we’re forced to change our passwords all the time.

During the pandemic, forced to work remotely, many organisations were faced with even greater cybersecurity challenges and had to apply enforced password updates. And we didn’t like it at all!! BUT…and there’s a big but to this approach! Since 2017 (pre-pandemic) there’s been a recommendation from a number of UK and US cybersecurity institutions that complex passwords and forced expiry was not the right approach. The findings indicated that “passphrases” with three or more words was more effective (at avoiding cyber attacks) than complex passwords.

The passphrase also needs to be complex, but you would write it and it becomes much easier for your brain to remember. There’s examples in the article, which also include using a foreign language word. It sounds so simple – and you know what, it is!

How about having a discussion with the IT department security team and suggesting the change – the article gives you some tips on how to approach this as well! I’m certainly going to start applying it next time I’m prompted to update my passwords!

Read: https://www.wsj.com/articles/complex-password-cyber-security-risk-11631051077

Storytelling is sticky: how to use it in your community

Storytelling forges bonds between members in a way that little else can. “We are, as a species, addicted to story,” US author Jonathan Gottschall once said, “Even when the body goes to sleep, the mind stays up all night, telling itself stories.”

Jakkii says: Whether your community is a community of interest, a community of practice, a customer community or an employee community, as community managers we’re always looking for ways to help people engage with the community and with one another.

Is leaning into storytelling in your bag of community tactics? If it isn’t, maybe it should be! As the article notes, storytelling helps to ‘dilute’ our differences, by using stories to help create shared understanding and connection – often especially when the stories being shared are about when things didn’t go well, rather than always only sharing the positive, ‘everything is awesome’ stories. The author also suggests it’s much easier for us to remember a narrative than it is to remember data and figures, so a story is more memorable for people, as well as more resonant.

So, how can you use storytelling? The following suggestions are offered:

  • Make room for profound conversations

  • Create a ritual around powerful narratives

  • Experiment with different ways of sharing

Each offers ways to invite community members to share their stories and, in turn, for these to be shared back with the community, allowing space for you to develop and build a narrative that community members can connect with.

Whether you already use storytelling or you try it going forward in your community, we’d love to hear your stories of how it went, what worked, and – of course, what didn’t! Share your stories with us in the comments or on social media.

Read: https://the.community.club/community-club/storytelling-is-sticky-how-to-use-it-as-a-glue-in-your-community-30b5

At home

Jakkii says: some of us have our eye on an exit date, some of us have our eye out to see if we’re going back into lockdown as restrictions tighten, while others face uncertainty about opening up. Whatever the state of things where you are, here’s a few things you can read, watch and do from home this week.

Friday Fives

Hybrid workplace and the future of work

Remote work and the digital workplace

Communication, collaboration, engagement, and culture

Community management, moderation and misinformation

Privacy, data and security

Big Tech, tech and regulation

Facebook

Social media

Extras

This is interesting: The neurologist who hacked his brain – and almost lost his mind

Things that make you go hmmm: The biggest country crossover hit of 2021 is a literal Applebee’s ad

Space: Earth glows mystical green in epic aurora image from the International Space Station

Podcast: How the workplace pendulum is swinging at Braze, DoorDash and Herman Miller

Friday playlist: The spookiest month begins today! Kick it off with these 20 horror podcasts that will scare the bejesus out of you

Sydney Business Insights – The Future, This Week Podcast

This week: COVID, climate and containers: how the world weathers the global logistics crisis and a quick look at the Facebook files, ByteDance, finfluencers, Shell gets out of shale and AR spiders.

Sandra Peter (Sydney Business Insights) and Kai Riemer (Digital Disruption Research Group) meet once a week to put their own spin on news that is impacting the future of business in The Future, This Week.

The stories this week

08:47 – The perfect storm for container shipping

Listen: https://sbi.sydney.edu.au/weathering-the-perfect-storm-of-container-shipping-on-the-future-this-week/


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