Creating a Secure Password

Creating a secure password is not as easy as using of the name of your date of birth or your mother’s maiden name as obscure as you might think it may be, password crackers are getting more and more powerful and the best way to protect yourself is to understand how password crackers work.

How do password crackers work?

If someone wants to crack your password unfortunately they are not going to sit in front of your computer and try to guess it one word at a time (unless they already have a pretty good idea of what it might be). It’s more likely that they will use password cracking software to look at millions of possible combinations a second. Password cracking software usually starts by going through every word in the dictionary and after that will try different combinations of words, numbers, letters and symbols until they find your password.

How do I make my password secure?

Simple, maths dictates that the longer and more random the combinations of letters, numbers and symbols you use, the longer it will take to crack. The harder it is the more chance they will get bored and move on. Next time you are making a password, make it more complicated but remember that your password is only useful if you can remember it – writing it down on a piece of paper is not an option!

Creating a secure password

There are a few easy tips to make a secure password, and a lot of sites enforce these kinds of passwords when creating an account e.g. some sites will say it must contain one capital letter, a numeral and has to be at least 6-8 characters long- this is slowly becoming the standard for creating an account online. For personal use online your password should contain 8 or more characters, at least one digit (0-9), one capital letter and one symbol (some websites may not allow a symbol, that’s okay just make it as tough as you can). It should not contain any dictionary words. An example of a good password would be:

MBi2Ma!

To help remember this password, it is constructed out of things which I would remember. (M)y (Bi)rthday is on the (2)nd of (Ma)y (!)

Have a play with your own passwords and see what you can come up with.

Written by The Original PC Doctor on 12/3/2009.