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Guest Blog by John Kearney of DXW highlights top security tips for password management

Trying to make passwords more secure can often end up having the opposite effect, for two main reasons:

• When people are faced with complex rules — at least one uppercase letter, number, symbol etc. (we’ve all been there) they will do the simplest thing possible.
• Complex passwords made up of random generated characters are much easier for a computer to guess than for a human to remember.

For evidence of how people choose passwords, you need look no further than the 10,000 most common passwords discovered in security breaches, as published on Github or this page on Wikipedia.  As I write, the second most common password is “password”, “Password” is number 176, “password1” is at 207, “PASSWORD” is at 710 and “Password1” checks in at 2,968.  As for the relative ease with which a computer can guess a random string as opposed to a well-crafted passphrase, XKCD tells that story better than we could.

No matter how many times people are told never to use the same password across many sites & services, most still do just that.  It’s human nature to take the quickest & easiest option, and the one that means we won’t forget our passwords and get locked out.  Once you understand how people interact with a system, and the reasons why the rules don’t result in the right kind of behaviour, you can take a different approach. 

As an individual you should:

• swap passwords for passphrases
• use a password manager
• update all your logins with randomly generated passphrases

As a business, you should:

• update your password policy & systems so people can use passphrases
• select a suitable password manager for your staff
• once the policies & tools are in place, make sure all users update their passwords
• read the NCSC’s guidance on updating your approach to your password policy

‘Explainability’ of AI decisions is a key area of the AI auditing framework.  This guidance from Project ExplAIn will inform our assessment methodology.

If an Artificial Intelligence (AI) system makes a decision about an individual, should that person be given an explanation of how the decision was made?  Should they get the same information about a decision regarding criminal justice as they would about a decision concerning healthcare?  These are just two of the issues we have been exploring with public and industry engagement groups over the last few months. 

In 2018, the Government tasked the ICO and The Alan Turing Institute (The Turing) to produce practical guidance for organisations, to assist them with explaining AI decisions to the individuals affected. This work has been titled ‘Project ExplAIn’. 

The ICO and The Turing conducted research, including citizens’ juries and industry roundtables, to gather views from a range of stakeholders with various, and sometimes competing, interests in the subject.  The findings of this research have now been published in a Project ExplAIn interim report.

The report identifies three key themes that emerged from the research: 

1. the importance of context in explaining AI decisions
2. the need for education & awareness around AI
3. the various challenges to providing explanations

The findings set out in the Project ExplAIn interim report will feed directly into ICO guidance for organisations. This will go out for public consultation over the summer and will be published in full in the autumn. 

All materials & reports generated from the citizens’ juries are freely available to access. The project ExplAIn guidance will also inform the ICO’s AI auditing framework, which is currently being consulted on and which is due to be published in 2020. 

3D heart modelling to rapidly diagnose coronary disease & a blood test which can rule-out a heart attack 75% quicker are among the technological innovations spreading across the NHS.

New innovations have already reached 300,000 patients, and speaking at the Reform digital health conference in London recently, NHS England chief executive Simon Stevens announced that over 400,000 more will benefit this year from new tests, procedures & treatments as part of the Long Term Plan.  This includes pregnant women getting a new pre-eclampsia test, and cluster headache sufferers getting access to a handheld gadget which uses low-levels of electric current to reduce pain.

Niall Dickson, CE of the NHS Confederation, responds to the Independent Review of Gross Negligence Manslaughter and Culpable Homicide.

"There will always be a need for accountability by both organisations and professionals, but as this report recognises, we need to change the way we think about patient safety, from a conversation about blame to one of learning……..

We know staff fear that if they engage in reflective practice, they open themselves up to liability or criminal proceedings, and this can limit what they are willing to share, in turn preventing meaningful learning from taking place.

A University of Liverpool-led partnership has been awarded £575k funding from the Office for Students for a project to further develop mental health provision for students across Liverpool.

The partnership, which includes the Innovation Agency, is behind a project that will employ staff in Mersey Care NHS Foundation Trust’s Hope Clinic, which supports people following self-harm.

The Government published an updated version of the How to Rent guide in England on 31 May 2019.

The new guide was published a day before the Tenant Fees Act came into force in England.  In this blog first published on the Anthony Gold website, RLA Policy Director David Smith takes a closer look at what has been updated in the guide and the implications of the change.

The guide needs to be given to all tenancies that are new or renewed for a new fixed term after 1 October 2015.  It is not required for tenancies that started before 1 October 2015 and which have continued after that date as periodic tenancies although there will be relatively few of these in existence.

The guide was updated slightly for the same reasons as it published the new version of the form 6A for serving s21 notices. That is the introduction of the Tenant Fees Act from 1 June 2019 and the consequent changes to the maximum size of a tenancy deposit and the various prohibitions on the charging of fees to tenants.

The key elements mentioned in the new guide are that:

• fees are not permitted, with a link to the further tenant guidance on the topic
• deposits are capped at 5 weeks rent equivalent, or 6 weeks for tenancies with annual rent of over £50k

Blind Veterans UK helps ex-Service men & women of every generation rebuild their lives after sight loss.  Since 1915 they’ve provided rehabilitation, training, practical advice and emotional support to tens of thousands of blind veterans.

It’s a sad fact that many of the blind veterans they support suffer from social isolation.   It happens as we get older and our families leave us, and partners pass away.  For people with sight loss, that isolation is all the more painful to bear.

It’s not just about losing other people though, it’s also about being isolated inside yourself when you are unable to carry out tasks such as going to the shops or even pick up a phone to speak to a friendly voice.  For those who can’t see, it often leads to losing your self-belief, and – even worse – your sense of belonging.

That’s why they need your support now as we remember the sacrifices made by those armed services personnel who landed on the beaches of Normandy 75 years ago last week

Find out more at: blindveterans.org.uk and follow us on Facebook at: facebook.com/blindveteransuk and on Twitter at: twitter.com/blindveterans.