Hackers and crackers are people who make unauthorized access to a network, a computer, or data belonging to someone else. Sometimes they may cause damage to information, remove it or may even cause distress to the real owner of the information. The following are some steps, tips, and warnings that you should be aware of, in order to prevent network problems that are likely to occur from hackers and crackers.

Steps

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    Use secure passwords. The passwords you use should contain at least 7, and more than 12 characters if your network supports this limit. It will be useful to use passwords which include letters, numbers and punctuation marks. No need to worry if your network does not allow punctuation marks for your password, you can use a combination of letters and numbers. The passwords will be more secure if you drop vowels and replace letters in memorable words. For example, instead of writing "personal" you can use "p3sne11" as a password.
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    Change passwords regularly. If you are not using a single use password system, you should change your passwords regularly. Nowadays, most of the modern management systems force passwords to expire after a particular amount of time. So you need to be aware of that.
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    Get permission before modifying the network. If you are a network service provider, this function is of significant importance. You can also set up a policy for making network changes that makes it easy to follow and carry out.
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    Do not tell crackers and hackers anything. Do not tell them which type of software you are using. If you reveal this information you are reducing cracker's time to crack into your network system. Some network administrators reveal this sort of information to the crackers without realizing it.
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    If you are not in the office, secure your computer system. There are many network access programs that allow users to save user IDs, passwords, dial in numbers, user name, email addresses and so on to make it easy for the user to log in to those programs. You need to be careful. Overall, it is useful not to save any of these user IDs or passwords or anything like that except if it is relevant. One of the best ways is to secure your computer system with a password, both on the computer BIOS and on screen saver.