Week 4 - Mind Map

Mind mapping is a quick exercise that can help you to visually see the scope of something and is useful in the brainstorming process. In fact, at the beginning of this project when I was selecting my topic I made a mind map of security, and circled the zones that I found the most interesting. This process helped me focus my efforts in the decision making process.

At this stage in my research where I have the topic selected and have many of my sources lined up, mind mapping can be used to expand or focus my projects scope, depending on what it exposes.

Here are five of my primary sources that I've discovered so far:

• Measuring effect of password complexity policies
• Password Memorability and Security: Empirical Results
• Testing Metrics for Password Creation Policies by Attacking Large Sets of Revealed Passwords
• Passwords and the Evolution of Imperfect Authentication.
• Password Managers: Attacks and Defenses

Comparing my sources to the mind map image can help to indicate if there are areas that would be unaddressed in my research so far. If any there is disparity between the topic and my research I could either expand my research scope to more fully encapsulate the topic or I could refocus the topic to fit within the research. As an example, I can see that I don't yet have any research that considers hashing algorithms or salting, so I will try to find something that helps to cover that area in the next few days.