Choosing a Strong Password
The security of your password-protected system is largely dependent upon the ‘strength’ of your password. If the password you have selected is weak, then, easier it is for a hacker to ‘decode’ your password using sophisticated and brute force programs that that are VERY good at guessing common passwords. Choosing a good password is difficult. The chosen password needs to be easy for a user to remember, but hard for anyone else to guess. If it is difficult for the user to remember, it will end up on a PostIt or some readily accessible. If it is easy to guess, then many methods will work to compromise the account.
Below, we have listed five useful tips for you to consider in generating a strong password that can significantly increase the safety and security of your password-accessible-site.
- Make your password at least six character long, with a mix of lower-and upper-case characters, numbers, and punctuation marks. Short and simple passwords might be guessed in second to minutes or hours, whereas long and complex passwords, mix of lower-and upper-case characters, numbers, and punctuation marks, serve to increase the ‘cracking time’ to years thereby deterring the cyber criminals.
2. Deliberately misspelling one or more words can make your password harder to crack.
3. Do not use personal information in your password that someone else is likely to be able to figure out. Example, your child’s name or your mother’s maiden name.
4. Do not use the same password to for all your Internet sites
5. Think of an uncommon phrase, and take the first, second or last letter of each word or a combination of your own choosing to generate your password. Throw in a capital letter and a punctuation mark or a number or two, and you can end up with a very strong password. For example, ‘It takes a village to raise a child’ would yield “itavtrac” or “ITavtr1c”.
