Password tips to make yours stronger and more secure

 

Maintaining secure passwords that you can remember can be challenging. Yet failing to have secure passwords makes your information, and the networks you access, vulnerable to the simplest of hacks. Getting passwords right doesn’t have to be difficult or frustrating. There are basic rules and easier ways to do it. Here’s what we recommend.

First, let’s cut right to the chase. The easiest, simplest way to manage strong passwords is with a password manager like KeePass, LastPass, DashLane, Roboform, or others. All of the leading password managers have browser plugins and mobile applications that when synchronized, give you seamless access to all of your passwords whatever device you’re using, whenever you need one. The real power of these tools is when you use their random password generator and set the length to as long as the site you’re creating a password for will allow, and character sets that include everything acceptable on the site. This strategy touches on three key points with passwords:

1. Each additional character you add to your password makes it exponentially more difficult to hack – so longer is better, longest allowed is best.
2. The entire ASCII character set should be used if the website or application allows it. Again, the more unique characters, the more difficult it is to crack.
3. It makes unique passwords for each site simple to manage.

We’ve all seen numerous tips on creating your own complex passphrases using acronyms or tricks like the first letter of each word in a sentence. The be clear, this approach is far better than what most of us are currently doing, but keeping track of those can still be challenging. A password manager, while not bullet-proof, is a better way to go.

If you aren’t currently using a password manager, we strongly encourage you to consider one. If you elect not to, then change your mindset from creating passwords to creating passphrases you can remember.

For more tips and recommendations on better cybersecurity practices, call us (949) 474-7774.

If you have any questions or if you are concerned about your organization’s cybersecurity, give us a call at (800) 970-0402. We’ll be happy to help.

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