How Secure are Your Passwords?
“Make sure you passwords are secure.” We hear it all the time. Groans can be heard all around the world when a website requires a password with a number AND a symbol AND it must be at least eight characters long. We know we shouldn’t make all our passwords similar, but “it’s so much easier to remember all of them if they’re the same.” It’s time that you get over that, because password security is now becoming more important than ever. Not even your tweets are safe anymore—32 million Twitter accounts were compromised on June 9th.
According to the US Department of Homeland Security, the biggest mistake people make it having a weak password, aka a password that is a dictionary term, common phrase, your name, your birthday, “password”, or “p@ssword”. This is their algorithm for a strong password:
- Come up with a sentence
Complex passwords are safer
- Remove any white space (i.e. spaces, tabs, etc.)
Complexpasswordsaresafer
- Turn the words into shorthand or intentionally misspell them
ComplekspasswordsRsafer
- Toss some numbers and/or symbols in there
Compleksp@sswordsRsafer2011!
You can use a website like this to see how long it would take a computer to crack your password. (Hint: it’s probably pretty fast.)
We hear about more and more major hacking scandals every year. At this point in technology, everything personal, private, and sensitive is protected by a password. But your weak password choice is like choosing to leave your door unlocked while trusting that no one will enter when you could have 7 deadbolts. You’ll be happy you chose a safer option if someone tries to hack you and can’t get away with all of your information or your identity.
