A note on passwords
This cannot be repeated enough, hence this post.
Passwords are often considered an obstacle by many and a lot do not understand why they exist. The passwords are mostly controlled by a policy that require the user to change them regularly and the password must be this long and that complex. How do you create strong passwords without being a Memory Guru?
The worst passwords imaginable are probably those written down somewhere. It might just be safer to have a blank password. Sure, you must have physical access to the place where you have hidden it. But unfortunately this is often at work and underneath the keyboard. Then there are passwords that relates to you like your birthday, name, the name of a family member or pet, social security number, login name and so forth. They are easily guessed by a human. And passwords containing words that exist in dictionaries (regardless of language), sequences or repeated characters are also easily guessed...by computers.
A strong password that keeps you fairly safe are those that are easy for you to remember, around ten characters long and contain uppercase, lowercase, numerical and special characters in “random” order.
Tip #1: How do you create strong passwords easily?
Think of a sentence: Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you are my only hope.
First we use the first character in each word including special characters which gives us:
HmO-WK,yamoh.
Now, since Wan in Obi-Wan sounds like one we replace it with the number 1, giving us:
HmO-1K,yamoh.
Now we have a 13 character long password that we can remember and it fulfills the complexity demanded by many common systems.
Tip #2: Treat your passwords like toothbrushes.
- Do not share them with anyone else.
- Change them regularly.
- Make sure they are of good quality.
Tip #3: Test your OLD passwords.
Do this to see how strong they were and then create better ones.
Never test a password in an application or online if you intend to use it!