paul.knibbs (8/23/2012)
Miles Neale (8/22/2012)
Just takes a little creativity and a good memory, and a handy password safe.
:-):-)
The problem there is that these questions are usually intended to allow you to get back in when you've forgotten your main password, so making the answer a password in itself is a bit counterproductive. I can certainly see value in giving the name of the hospital or street you were born in rather than the town, though--true, that information is likely available to anyone who digs deep enough, but it would require a lot more work on their behalf.
Thanks Paul, and I understand your point. However the use of security questions is not limited to the second path to getting into a system or other secured resource. In certain two-phase security strategies there are at least two vehicles a user must provide before access is granted. One is usually the userid and password pair. The second can be a variety of things from a fob to some biometric factor. These include cadence, eye-scan, fingerprint etc. But some systems are not able to afford such technology.
The use of a collection of security questions and answers will often be used as the second identifying factor in application or system security. In this strategy the users is allowed to select 5 or 6 questions from a list of questions and give appropriate answers. In some strategies the user can create 5 or 6 different unique questions them selves. When the user later tries to login to the system they are required to answer two of three randomly selected questions or they are not allowed to enter the system. When this approach is given as an option the user can better protect themselves by not giving an obvious answer and using something more like the password strategy offered earlier.
Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!