With the digital revolution and a world-wide economy and high-tech communications system comes a world in which more and more can be destroyed, ransomed, or stolen electronically. With an ever-greater proportion of our lives, our privacy, and our assets susceptible to hacking and electronic theft comes an almost insatiable need for passwords, and that means “strong” passwords, using upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and even a symbol or two. By the way, don’t use the same password twice, or any combination that’s easy for you to remember, because that makes it easier for the hacker.

My digital presence is likely moderate. I don’t do Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, or a host of other applications. There’s the website, email, and a “few” other applications… except those few applications actually added up to another dozen… and I probably forgot a few that I seldom use. And that means fourteen unique passwords that need to be changed regularly. Right now, certain applications I regularly have to try twice, because I inadvertently type the old password, or some combination.

Because of the requirements of her job, my wife likely has twice as many passwords to remember, or write down in a hidden place. I have trouble with fourteen. I can’t imagine twice that amount. Now, I notice that at least one internet company is now offering password management and protection services, which will require most certainly just one password to access all the others, but what if the company gets hacked?

Years ago, I read a science fiction story where all the knowledge of the world was basically stored in a very secure computer but small installation, surrounded by thousands of indices needed to access it…and everything in the world crashed because access was lost. Now, that’s an oversimplification because we’ll always have hundreds if not thousands of knowledge databases… BUT…there will only be a handful monitoring the electric power grid, the New York Stock Exchange, even the computers monitoring municipal water and sewage systems… and has everyone forgotten how three tiny computer glitches in the past two years resulted in thousands of flight delays and cancelations by United Airlines, Delta Airlines, and British Airways?

What tends to get overlooked is that any password, security system or the like designed either by people or computers falls, at least theoretically, into two categories, one so secure no one can access it, or one that is at best semi-secure, where people and computers with high abilities can break in, regardless of the security. The first kind is fine until it needs to be fixed, updated, and then everything crashes. The second will always be hacked.

But, for the sake of profit and convenience, we want everything computerized, that is, until our identity is the one stolen, our company data is the data stolen or ransomwared, or our bank account the one drained.

In the meantime, be very careful with your construction of passwords, and be aware that, even if you are, computer security is still a form of Russian roulette, just with odds much more in your favor than one bullet in six being fatal. The downside of this is that when you are hacked, especially in some extreme cases, you’ll likely be so exasperated and furious that you may want to kill someone – except you’ll never be able to physically reach whoever did it, which is exactly why computer crime is soaring and will continue to do so.