On the eve of the 22nd anniversary of the September 11 attacks on what was New York’s World Trade Centre, comes this…

It’s a true story that takes place on that fateful day, but a story more specifically about something else – computer passwords: those tiny personal codes that can strain our memory and lead to fist-clenching when we can’t remember them.

One of the world’s largest financial services firms, CANTOR FITZGERALD, occupied the top five floors above where American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower. 658 employees of the company lost their lives that day.

Amidst the chaos, heartbreak and tragedy, Chairman and CEO Howard Lutnick was responsible for ensuring the viability of his company. The biggest threat to that? No-one knew the passwords for hundreds of accounts and files that were needed to get back online in time for the reopening of the bond markets.

CANTOR FITZGERALD did have extensive contingency plans in place, including a requirement that all employees tell their work passwords to four nearby colleagues. But now a large majority of the firm’s 960 New York employees were dead.

Hours after the attacks, more than 30 security experts dispatched from Microsoft arrived at an improvised CANTOR FITZGERALD command centre.

Many of the missing passwords would prove to be relatively secure – the JHx6fT!9 type that the company’s IT department had implored everyone to choose.

To crack those, the Microsoft technicians performed ‘brute force’ attacks, using fast computers to begin with ‘a’, then work through every possible letter and number combination before ending at ‘zzzzzzz’.

But even with the fastest computers, brute-force attacks, working through trillions of combinations, could take days.

Microsoft’s technicians knew that they needed to take advantage of two facts: many people use the same password for multiple accounts and these passwords are typically personalized.

The technicians explained that for their algorithms to work best, they needed large amounts of trivia about the owner of each missing password, the kinds of things that were too specific, too personal and too idiosyncratic for companies to keep on file.

Howard Lutnick soon found himself on the phone calling the spouses, parents and siblings of his former colleagues to console them – and to ask them, ever so gently, whether they knew their loved ones’ passwords.

Most often they did not, which meant Lutnick had to begin working his way through a checklist that had been provided to him by the Microsoft technicians. “What is your wedding anniversary? Tell me again where he went to University? You guys have a dog, don’t you? What’s her name?”

This was all less than 24 hours after the towers had fallen. Families had not accepted their losses. Conversations teetered between crying and agonizing silences. Sometimes it took more than an hour to work through the checklist, but Lutnick made sure that he was never the one to hang up first.

In the end, Microsoft’s technicians got what they needed. CANTOR FITZGERALD was back in operation within two days.

Click HERE to get a HAPPY DAYS hit.

WONDER WOMAN 1984 was the last movie that got me to a cinema. That was three years ago.

These days, the only motivation to see something at the ‘ol bricks ‘n mortar is if a sequel or remake to a film I once liked gets a showing.

So it was a few days back with the release of THE EQUALIZER 3.

How did it rate? So as not to be underdone in the opinion stakes, here’s how I’d score all three in the series…