Creating Strong Passwords
Passwords are apart of our everyday life in today’s digital world. No matter where you go or what you are doing, you will be asked for a password to access something at least once a day. Whether it be to access your work or home computer, your email accounts (Hotmail, GMail), eBay, Paypal, online banking, online shopping, and generally anything else where your personal information is stored.
All to often you hear about people who have had their digital identities stolen. It is bound to happen to you at least once throughout your life. You probably wont even realise it until it is to late. One day you will go to check your bank account balance online and find that the $1000 you have been saving for the past 12 months is gone, or maybe a new personal loan has been taken out in your name. This kind of thing is certainly not unheard of or uncommon.
Even if you choose a long password, 50 characters for instance, that password is useless if all it contains is basic words that can be found in the average dictionary. There are programs out there that can very easily break these passwords either by brute force or dictionary attacks.
With that in mind, passwords with strong complexity requirements should be used whenever possible.
What Not To Use
- You should never use your real name, a username or a word that can be easily associated with you, such as the name of your children, birth date, pet, spouse and so on. These are generally the first things criminals will try.
- Don’t use a word that exists in the dictionary. There are sophisticated tools out there that can rapidly guess passwords that are based on words in dictionaries, including common misspellings, words spelled backwards, and substitutions. This also includes all sorts of profanity.
- Don’t use the same password on multiple systems. If any one of those systems (online forums, email accounts, etc) using this password is compromised, all of your other information protected by that password should also be considered compromised. It is critical to use different passwords for different systems.
- Don’t use an alphabetic or numeric series of characters. Exmaple: ABCDE, EDCBA, 12345, 54321.
- Don’t use a string of identical letters or numbers. Exmaple: AAAAAA, BBBBBB, 111111, 222222.
- Don’t store you passwords anywhere online!
Creating a Strong Password
- The most secure passwords are at least 14 or more characters long (8 or more characters at an absolute minimum). The more characters you add, the more secure your password.
- These passwords should contain a variety of upper and lower case letters as well as numbers.
- They should also include symbols such as: $ % @ # * & > < ! +
- Many systems also support the use of a space (space bar). Take advantage of this where possible.
Creating a strong password is a relatively simple exercise however, far to many people refuse to do it and continue using simple passwords, not to mention the same password, and for one reason… it’s easy to remember! This should never be used as an excuse for protecting sensitive information. It’s just not worth the risk.
Password Examples
Bad Passwords:
- admin12345
- abcABC123
- password1
Good Passwords:
- MyeB4yAcc0untP@$$w0rd - My eBay Account Password
- MyC0mput3rP@$$w0rd! - My Computer Password!
- Ih4t3myP3tF3rr3t! - I hate my Pet Ferret!
Protecting Your Password
Treat your passwords with as much care as the information that they protect. For example, don’t go sticking the password to your online banking to the front of your computer monitor. This to be quite honest would be down right stupid!
- Use a different password on each account/system that contains information that you want to protect.
- If someone sends you an email asking you to enter in your username and password because the system is being updated (or something along those lines), DON’T DO IT! DELETE THE EMAIL! No bank, financial institution or any other company for that matter will/should ever ask you to submit a password to them via email. Even over the phone don’t do it. They can confirm who you are using various other methods like your date of birth, drivers license number, telephone number or even your address, but don’t give them your password. They do not need it. If they persist, hang up and call them yourself and explain the situation. Even better, go into the bank and personally speak to a consultant. The password is the key! No one but you needs to know this password. Who cares if someone knows when you were born though!
- You should change your passwords regularly. This will keep criminals guessing and if they do actually manage to crack your password, it’s to late, you have changed it already, and they are back to square one. The strength of your password will help keep it valid for a longer. A password that is shorter than 8 characters should be considered only good for a month or two at the most. A password that is 14 characters or longer (and follows the rules outlined above) can be good for several years.
- If you ‘really’ have to write your passwords down, keep them somewhere safe and preferably not all together. If you have a library of books available to you, pick a big book and open it up at a random page. Using pencil, lightly write your password in there and just remember the page number. Don’t write your passwords on sticky notes and place them underneath your keyboard or on your computer monitor.
- Don’t reveal your passwords to others. Keep your passwords hidden from friends or family members (especially children) who could pass them on to other less trustworthy individuals. Passwords that you need to share with others, such as the password to your online banking account that you might share with your spouse, are the only exceptions.
I hope you find this article useful. If you are one of those people who currently use simple passwords, maybe it’s about time you put into practice some of things mentioned above. It’s better to have to much security then not enough.
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