Friday, May 20, 2016

Gods in the ivory tower of MAS

The "gods" living in the ivory tower of the Monetary Authority of Singapore are concerned about internet security.

They passed a decree to the banks, stockbrokers and other denizens in the financial sector to impose a high standard of internet security, including the following:

a) All passwords must be a strong password forming a combination of capital letter, small letters, numbers and special characters.

b) The passwords must be changed at regular intervals and cannot be reused in the future.

What the gods did not realize is that an ordinary citizen, like me, is impacted in a most severe way. I have to maintain a confusing arrays of passwords for the following:

a) Two Paypal accounts - personal and corporate
b) One CDP account - using Singpass
c) Several stockbroking accounts for investments and trading

The administrators of these websites have different definitions of what is a strong password - so I cannot use a common password for some of these accounts. The regular change of passwords is a nightmare. The change request usually occurs at a bad moment, when I do not have the time to pay attention.

The outcome? I have to write down all the passwords in a notebook. It can be accessed by anyone who finds my notebook (isn't it risky?). Sometimes, I forget to update my notebook with the change in password and cannot remember the "funny" password that was created at the last change.

My online experience is now a nightmare - thanks to the "gods" in the ivory tower of the MAS.


2 comments:

Bai Hu said...

100% agree with u Mr TAN.

PL said...

I agree with you, Mr Tan

Blog Archive