How To Make A Secure Password

Did you know that over 60% of successful hacking attacks are due to weak passwords? Having a password that is easy to crack makes you and your data vulnerable to all kinds of exploitation: as an example, a business we know well recently had their Google Adwords account hacked by a US Payday loans promoter who ran up a bill of over $21,000 in a single day. Not nice.

Gone are the days of simple passwords like birthdays, names of pets of family members, and everyday items like “table” or “pencil” (both of which are rather popular it turns out). Also, it’s not good enough to add something like ‘123’ or ‘abc’ after the password. Hackers are wise to this tactic and they also employ some very decent software in their attempts to hack people’s accounts. Brute force password crackers will simply bombard an account with various combinations until they eventually get it right. These programs also use lists of the most popular passwords in use and work their way through them. They also use character substitution techniques to in case you’ve decided to use a simple variation of a popular password. Brute force programs are just one type of password cracking tool, there are many others that are more sophisticated and more effective. This is why you need to start using secure passwords.

The problem with complex passwords is that they are difficult to remember, none of us want to have to keep reminding ourselves of the password every time we want to login to one of our secure online services, but how can you construct a secure password that is easy to remember ?

It’s easy to create a secure password that’s also easy to remember in 3 simple steps…

1. Choose three words
Big Red Bus

2. Now substitute some of the letters for numbers
B1g R3d 8us

3. To complete your secure password, add some symbols
B1g^R3d!8us

Easy isn’t it, and a secure password HUGELY reduces the chances that your online accounts will get hacked. Remember, hacking is a very real threat, weak passwords are the reason for data theft and online fraud in over 60% of cases, so do yourself a favour and start using secure passwords.