One of highlighted topics during Cybersecurity Awareness Month is strong passwords and use of a password manager. These are the first critical steps in protecting your online information and data.
We all take precautions to feel safe in our daily lives, and we should do the same in our digital world through passwords and a password manager. The concept of passwords started before the digital landscape existed and was initially called a “watchword”. Words or phrases were used at military outposts to confirm identity and ensure only authorized personnel were allowed in. Fast forward to today, and we all use passwords to protect our most personal and delicate data. We have continued to evolve the strength of passwords by adapting to the use of complex passwords, passphrases, and password managers to safeguard our digital assets.
How do you create a strong password?
This is not the time to bring your basics to the table - stay away from birthdates, hometowns, pet names, and any other obvious identifiable factors in your life. Shake it up and keep it interesting by doing the following:
Longer is More Secure When it comes to strong passwords - the longer, the better. Passwords should aim to be 16 characters or longer.
Randomize to Optimize To help increase complexity, we recommend using a variety of characters, including uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters.
Pro-Tip! You can use a passphrase instead of a password – a string or a sentence of unrelated words. Example → purplemakesmesmile!
Take your passphrase to the next level by adding characters or numbers within it. Example → PurpleMakesMe85Smile!
Don’t Reuse or Recycle (when it comes to passwords) Passwords should not be reused across your accounts. Avoiding this ensures that if one of your accounts is compromised, it doesn’t impact or expose any others. Keep it unique and new for each account.
Simplifying Your Account Access Through a Password Manager
Keeping passwords long, random, and unique across your accounts can make it hard to remember all of them – this is where a password manager comes into play. Password managers are tools that help users store and manage online account passwords. These vault-like tools allow individuals to remember only one master password that unlocks the rest. There is no shortage of password manager options available, and we recommend researching and comparing them to find the best fit for you.
If you think that maybe some of your passwords don’t check the boxes above, or if you are using the same password across multiple accounts, now is the time to update. Remember to keep those passwords long, random, and unique! Wondering if you have a hard password to crack? Test it with one of these password strength meters.
Help keep yourself and your organization secure with our one-pager on passwords DOs and DON’Ts here. Stay tuned next week for our second blog of Cybersecurity Awareness Month on multi-factor authentication.
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