A Guide to Strong passwords
To continue on a bit about the passwords I mentioned yesterday, I decided to give some pointers on what makes a strong password. Also, a few utilities to help with the creation, besides the lastpass I referred to yesterday.
The role that passwords play in securing your information is often underestimated and overlooked. Weak passwords provide attackers with easy access to your computers and other information on the net while strong passwords are considerably harder to crack, even with the password-cracking software that is available today. Password-cracking tools continue to improve, and the computers that are used to crack passwords are more powerful than ever. Password-cracking software uses one of three approaches: intelligent guessing, dictionary attacks, and brute-force automated attacks that try every possible combination of characters. Given enough time, the automated method can crack any password. However, strong passwords are much harder to crack than weak passwords. A secure computer has strong passwords for all user accounts.
What makes a weak password:
- No password.
- Contains your user name or real name.
- Contains a complete dictionary word.
- Is used for multiple websites or locations
A strong password:
- Is at least seven characters long.
- Does not contain your user name, real name, or company name.
- Does not contain a complete dictionary word.
- Is significantly different from previous passwords. Passwords that increment (Password1, Password2, Password3 …) are not strong.
- Contains characters from each of the following four groups:
Group Examples Uppercase letters A, B, C … Lowercase letters a, b, c … Numerals 0, 1,2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 Symbols found on the keyboard (all keyboard characters not defined as letters or numerals) ` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + – = { } | : ” ; ‘ < > ? , . /
An example of a strong password is u+6^}*$X.
If making them up on your own is not your forte, there are utilities and websites out there. A few are listed:
- http://www.pctools.com/guides/password/
- http://www.goodpassword.com/
- http://strongpasswordgenerator.com/ – Even gives a mnemonic (Memory Aid)
Diego is currently an IT Engineer that is trying to bring the same knowledge his users get to the web. He also maintains Your Home PC Helpdesk Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/security-articles/a-guide-to-strong-passwords-995760.html
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