Create a strong, secure password

Passwords are the foundation of computer security and should not be taken lightly. Many do take them very lightly however, opting for easy-to-remember names or words, citing the difficulty of remembering a secure password. I ask you: in the long run, is it more important to have an easy-to-remember password, or a bank account that’s safe from criminals? If you chose the latter, read on…

• Do not use names, nor words found in the dictionary. There are programs and viruses that spend all day slamming networks with dictionary attacks; dictionary attack is a term for a brute force cracking method wherein the criminal tries to log into a computer hundreds of times per second, using random combinations of names and words found in the dictionary.
• Your password’s length should not be excessively short. Choose one that’s at least 8 characters long.
• I should not even have to approach the topic of passwords such as “1111″, “123″ and “qwerty”. Don’t even think about it.
• Select an alphanumeric password, meaning that it contains both letters and numbers. Try appending a random number to the end of the password, or replacing one or two letters with numbers.
• Instead of using the same password for everything you access, choose a root password, then take the name of the service or application you’re accessing, replace a few letters with numbers (or jumble it up), and append it to the end of your root password.
• Use a password generating program.
• PWGen asks you to input some entropy and then generates extremely strong passwords.
• Tony Lieuallen’s Phonetic Password Generator creates passwords comprised of random letters and number, in a grammatically-based pattern that makes similar to actual words and therefore easier to remember than purely random passwords.
• Finally, if you must write down your new, safe, secure password, put it on a peice of paper and store it in a safe place like your wallet (or if you’re so inclined, put your passwords in a text file and encrypt it).