Password Security

Setting a strong password

As we all know, we need passwords for everything these days, but did you realise that having a weak password is just as bad as having no password at all?

A weak password is one of the most common ways that allows a hacker to break into computers, they guess the password. These are generally short words that are familiar to the user (dog’s name, kids name, mother’s name) or in the dictionary, or like the examples below are the same consecutive number.

Weak passwords that appear on Forbes weakest 100 password list:

Password
111111
12345
qwertyuiop
abc123

This type of password leaves you open to being hacked for fun, financial gain or identity theft.

A strong password is one that should be hard for a person or program to discover, it should include a combination of upper and lower case characters, numbers and symbols and be at least 10 characters long. A strong password will provide essential protection from hackers wanting to steal from you.

Examples of strong passwords from a password generator:

Y5(t6&dd85s("STk
L,V6*5H[/g{N9(qK
F1ASv|J=D$Z1

However, these would be very hard to remember so you could try using phrases:

‘The first house I ever lived in was 591 Fake Street’ becomes TfhIeliw591FS
‘I Love My Piano’ becomes !Lov3MyP1ano
‘I Love My Dog’ becomes I7oveMyD0g!!

Although substitutions can also be hard to remember. Using phrases made of random common words can help make passwords incredibly hard for a computer to guess, but easy for you to remember: