The best way to set a strong password is to use a password manager, which we covered in a previous blog. If, however, this is not possible, the below represents the best advice on how to create strong passwords you can easily remember.
Years of ‘at least 8 characters, must include lower case, upper case, numbers and special characters’ have actually made our passwords less secure and easier for criminals to guess.
While creating these passwords is better than using a single word, the complexity leads to them being hard for the human brain to remember, and result in passwords being written down and reused with only minor changes. Both of these factors greatly undermine a password’s security.
There is a much better way to create passwords that are easy to remember, but still long and strong, which is a Passphrase. A Passphrase is a short phrase in place of a password.
It’s unlikely most people could remember lots of different 20 random character passwords, but most people can remember lyrics from their favourite songs, which will contain more than 20 words and hundreds of characters.
To create a passphrase, try this:
First, take six random words, for example: ‘crystal apple long truck high jump’
Next, create a picture of the words in your head, like so:
Finally, make it unique by adding in the name of the service in a random way:
‘crystal apple long truck Facebook high jump’ or ‘insta crystal apple long truck high jump’.
Now you have a password that’s quite easy to remember, but also 40 characters long and almost impossible to guess.
Even using the best modern computers and techniques, it would take a guessing program longer than the life expectancy of the earth to guess that password!
So, next time your asked to create or change a password, think passphrase.
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