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
Welcome back! You may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Related Posts - Security Mechanic Provides No Security! Security Mechanic is a rogue security program that nonfunctional. Although the security alerts it displays to the user look very authentic and are often frightening, this product serves no purpose. Through the aggressive and misleading alerts, the hackers who invented the product hope to scare the user into believing that......
- SpyShredder – Don't Depend On It for Security! SpyShredder is an extremely dangerous rogue security program that is designed to look like an authentic spyware removal tool to the user. This application advertises aggressively to the user through non-stop pop-up threat alerts and advertisements. The hacker's main intention is to make the user believe that threats and parasites......
- Social Engineering: The Do’s & Don’ts Hackers and crackers use a proven technique called “social engineering” to determine the passwords you use to secure your computer. This technique is extremely effective and based upon an analysis of your lifestyle. So when choosing a password, make it as difficult as possible for someone to make educated guesses......
- Computer Security Computer security means a security which is used in computer and network. When some unauthorized person works on our computer than computer security is used in detecting that person and preventing that person from using it. In order to be safe as we use computer in day today life computer......
- 10 Best Practices for Secure Coding To ensure that you build and deploy the most secure software possible, Orthus recommends the following best practices for secure coding: 1. Validate user input Never assume that input from HTML forms is valid. Just because you gave the user only hidden fields or pull downs, or you......
Related Websites - Article Submission Secrets - A Great Formula for Prospect & Profit Pulling Titles for Your Articles Powerful article marketing requires that you write a great title for your articles.So here is just one of my formulas for a great title - Keywords - Benefits - Keywords. Use your keywords in the beginning of your title, make sure you make the benefit(s) clear, and then use......
-
Home Network Security [/caption] Home Computer security 1. What is computer security? Computer security is the process of preventing and detecting unauthorized use of your computer. Prevention measures help you to stop unauthorized users (also known as "intruders") from accessing any part of your computer system. Detection helps you to determine whether or...... -
Determining Sports Card Values If you are serious about collecting sports cards of any type, then you are going to want to have an understanding of what you can do to determine sport cards values as well. When it comes to the sports card collecting hobby or past time, there are certain questions that...... - Article Submission Secrets - A Great Formula for Prospect & Profit Pulling Titles for Your Articles Powerful article marketing requires that you write a great title for your articles.So here is just one of my formulas for a great title - Keywords - Benefits - Keywords. Use your keywords in the beginning of your title, make sure you make the benefit(s) clear, and then use......
-
6 Easy Tips on Raising Your FICO Score In today’s world, it’s easy to define your self worth by your FICO score. Whether you are trying to buy a house, get more credit or just get back on the right track, a low FICO score can really impact your entire life. However, there are some easy steps that......
« Why You Can Use Multiple Lists And How To Get The Most Out Of Them | Home | Antivirus: The most dangerous threat to computer »
Leave a Comment