Rethinking Your Password Strategies

As more sites are hacked and holes emerge in programs, changing how you think of passwords is critical.

 
The use of good passwords is the first line of defense you have to protect your information. It does not matter whether it is your password to log on to your computer, access your email over the web or your password to Social Networking sites. Each and everyone of them is your first line of defense to stop those who are up to no good. We have seen way too many breaches over the past 12 months making the whole idea of secure passwords far more important than they have ever been before.

Some parts of the problem are outside your control. As an example, when hackers gain access to a server which contains passwords of users, there is not much you can do about protecting yourself. The best thing is to change your password as soon as you hear about an event like this happening. Unfortunately, the trend is to not release information until days or weeks later and at that point, the damage has already been done. So, what are you to do to protect yourself. There are several strategies you can employee.

Do not reuse passwords

This is the first strategy you should employee. If you use the same password on your GMail account as you do on your Facebook account, you are asking for trouble. Some people use the same password across everything which requires one. That alone will cause you major problems if someone gets a list of passwords from a server and you are one of them. Hackers know that many people do not create unique passwords, but instead take the easy path. Keeping each password unique is very important.

Use a variety of characters to make a complex password

Some people only use letters to define their password. This makes it very easy for hackers to guess. You should include a variety of characters which includes letters (upper and lower case), numbers and special characters. I realize that some locations limit you on the special characters and some do not allow them at all. In those situations, you need to take other measures. Remember, you are trying to protect your information and that should make it critical to protect. So, do not use something that is easily guessed, like your first and last name put together.

Longer passwords are harder to crack

It used to be a password of 6 characters was consider to be safe. The number of characters necessary to protect your password is continuing to change. It used to be a lower length, but now a length of 12 characters is considered the minimum to be consider secure. That's right a minimum of 12. The majority of the population probably is not using a password that long. It makes it too hard to remember. The reason for the longer passwords is because the hackers tools have become more sophisticated, so you need to try and stay ahead of them. Software to maintain a list of your passwords may be something you should consider.

Password security questions

When you forget your password, there are many locations which give you the option of changing it. In those situations, they ask you questions when you set up your account. The key is to not create and answer questions which are easily guessed. Such as what elementary school did you go to is one that is seen a lot. If you put that information on your Facebook page, you just gave someone part of what they need to reset your password and log on to your account. It is important to create questions or provide answers which are not going to be easily guessed. One that I see a lot is what is your mother's maiden name. With so much information on the web, that one could probably be easily found and used. Do not put in a name that is easily found, but one that cannot be found. Yes, I am saying to not put in your mothers maiden name unless you want to have someone get into your account. Pick another name to put in so as to make it that much harder.

Password management software

There is a trend to use password management tools, such as RoboForm which has features to manage all your passwords and generate unique passwords for you. With something like this, you do not have to remember the logon and password once you set it up. You click on the item in the password management software and it goes to the site and logs you on. This is something which I see growing in need as longer passwords become the norm to protect your accounts. With this type of software, you only have to remember a single password rather than the passwords for each of your logons.

The landscape continues to change when it comes to passwords and you must adapt and adjust to protect yourself.