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Password Quality / Generation
The Problem:
Generally speaking, about seventy-five percent or more of passwords encountered are `insecureī passwords -- meaning they can be easily guessed. Your password(s) protect everything from your e-mail to your website -- and sometimes even your personal documents and the like. For that reason, your passwords must be carefully guarded and virtually unguessable.
The Symptoms:
Your password is insecure if itīs a dictionary word, a name or a birthday. Likewise, itīs insecure if itīs a dictionary word with a number or two added on or anything like that. These are easily guessable passwords which can be broken with something called a "brute force program" which tries common password after common password until it finds the right one for the job.
The Solution:
Quite simply, the solution is to change your password to something more secure -- and to use different passwords for different applications, so if one is compromised they wonīt all be compromised.
Try using randomly generated seven character passwords with random capitalization if possible. For some, however, this is just too much to remember (writing it down is probably a bad idea ;-). If necessary, at least choose a password which has random capitalization (BroWN instead of brown, for instance) and added numbers (Br0WN392 instead of BroWN).
By the way, passwords which are too long arenīt any better than shorter passwords -- most systems only recognize passwords to seven or eight characters, making the rest useless. |
