Five Foolproof Tips for Creating Secure Passwords

Working, shopping, managing finances... as more of how we function day to day moves to virtual spaces, the need for password security remains at an all-time high. According to recent reporting, 555 million passwords have been stolen on the dark web since 2017. Further, 81 percent of company data breaches are caused by poor passwords, and 80 percent of hacking incidents are the result of stolen and reused login information.  

Matt Buchanan, the founder of Change Your Password Day which occurs every year on February 1st, created the day because he was personally hacked twice and felt it would be helpful to establish a day to remind people to update their passwords. Start changing your passwords today using these five foolproof tips. 

1. Use a Password Manager. A lot of us use the excuse that we can’t remember all our passwords, so it is easier to use one and re-use it for everything. With password managers, why worry about it. I personally like to use Keeper Security and use it to manage all my passwords for both generating passwords and storing them.  When I need a password, I just copy and paste it from Keeper Security. Super easy. 
    
2. Create strong passwords. If you do not want to use a password manager, be sure to use a strong password that is difficult to break. I manage several servers that are directly connected to the internet, and when I review security logs, all I see are almost non-stop password guessing attempts from random attackers. I bet you’re wondering if guessing password works… yeah, it does, that’s why the attackers keep doing it.   
    
   Creating a strong password is a lot easier than you think. I would recommend you use a website like Securityorg.com’s “How Secure is My Password” webpage to help you see how difficult it would be to guess a password you make. The addition of an additional number or special character can increase a password’s crackability time from a few hours to millions of years.  
    
   A word of caution: the site above boasts that, “Entries are 100% secure and not stored in any way or shared with anyone. Period.” However, it may be better to use a similar-ish password to yours to get an idea of how secure it is without fully giving it completely away. 😊 
   
   
3. Don’t share passwords between websites. Use a password for a single website and do not share them, just in case they get hacked. I cringe even saying this, but if you are going to share them between websites, make sure you know what site you’re using what password on. That way if it does get hacked, you know what password you need to change.
   
   
4. Change your passwords regularly. I would recommend that you change passwords when you change the batteries in your smoke detector. If you played around with the website above to test your password strength, you will realize that it does not take attackers long to break some passwords, so change them often.
   
   
5. Lastly, always use two factor-authentication. It’s a little bit extra work to get set-up but worth it in the end.  That way, if the attacker does break your password, it won’t matter because you have two-factor authentication set up.