Password Security Tips

There is a trade off between choosing a complex secure password – and choosing a password that you can remember.

Regardless of the platform, a secure and sensible password is a must. A professional hacker doesn’t really mind whether you are accessing cloud, server, or desktop data. The software that the professional hackers use to crack your password is capable of making one hundred billion password guesses per second. If your password contains 6 or less letters they could have access instantly in less than a second.

But there are some simple things you can do to create and easily remember a complex, secure password.

If your password consists of 10 upper and lowercase letters and numbers, it would take 5 days for a professional to crack – now that’s much better.

If you are serious about security and your password includes a symbol of any kind, then you are much, much safer.

Using a 12 character password with symbols, numbers and upper & lower case letters means a professional would take 226 years to crack it – that’s more like it!

See How Long Does It Take for a Hacker to Crack a Password?

Here are some simple tips for creating passwords:

• Complexity. Include at least one uppercase letter PLUS a symbol.
• Length. Make your passwords long with twelve or more characters (preferably 12-16)
• Variation. To keep strong passwords effective, change them about every three months.
• Variety. Don’t use the same password for everything.

And to create passwords that you can remember:

• Complexity. Use numbers, symbols and characters in place of letters that they resemble e.g. Luc@5
• Length. Create length with combinations such as a baseword+location e.g Luc@5 + 4email
• Variation and Variety. Go with a theme for your ‘base password’ e.g. your favourite movie – Lucas, Fisher, Wookie and rotate these words every few months

And for goodness sake:

• Don’t write down your passwords
• And don’t use one of these ones…2024 worst passwords