Google improves password security

"Helping businesses, schools and organisations to keep information safe is critical, and we've been providing Google Apps customers with a spectrum of capabilities to help ensure that only authorised users have access to information accessible from the cloud," wrote Eran Feigenbaum, director of security for Google Apps, in a blog post.

"These include Secure Sockets Layer options, single sign-on capabilities, and administrative controls for how widely users can share and publish information from Google Docs, Google Sites and Google Calendar."

Google has also added a new layer of security with administrator controls that allow enterprises to define the length of passwords and analyse their strength.

The company offered a number of password selection tips. "The first step in protecting your online privacy is creating a safe password, i.e. one that a computer program or persistent individual won't easily be able to guess in a short period of time," the advice reads.

"To help you choose a secure password, we've created a feature that lets you know visually how safe your password is as soon as you create it."

One example, which may seem obvious, is "not to use a password listed as an example of how to pick a good password".

The relative strength of a password can be determined automatically in real time as Google's account authentication system constantly analyses password use and attempts to break them.

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