It seems obvious, but a weak password can be 1 word, or even 2 words. It could be a password that is your mother\u2019s maiden name or something equally personal to you. For example, in the film War Games the password for a massive government machine was \u201cJoshua\u201d who was the son of the inventor of said machine. In the film, it\u2019s fair to the inventor that he didn\u2019t know the machine had been plugged into the Internet or was even being used.<\/p>\n
If you used your wife\u2019s name as a password, this is information anyone could ask you and just try to login any account. Email account, online storage, bank account, they don\u2019t need to be at your computer. They can simply be at their own computer.<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t choose a password that is obviously personal to you and don\u2019t use 1 word from the dictionary!<\/p>\n
For this you need to understand there are 2 main ways to get around password security that are easy: Guess the password if this is someone you specifically know or targeting to get into their email account or some other account.<\/p>\n
The other method for getting into a system is a brute force attack, this is where a system will have a list of words (from a dictionary) and then it will try each word in turn, so if your password is \u201cZoo\u201d then it\u2019ll take a while but you will lose your account security.<\/p>\n
There are more advanced tools that hackers and crackers can use to break account security, so even by using 2 words like \u201cZooApocolypse\u201d is better, still bad practice.<\/p>\n
A strong password is something that can\u2019t be guessed as it might look like a word, but it might not be a word. For example: \u201cpa55word\u201d looks like password (don\u2019t use this as it\u2019s a common password) but maybe take your wife name: Sophie and replace the letters with numbers, so \u201c5oph13\u201d<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s still just numbers and letters. To be sure no-one will guess your password you want to make it longer and adding some symbols. Maybe add another word onto the password, maybe your favourite kitchen appliance so \u201c5oph!3Bl3nd3r\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve added in an exclamation mark; this is to throw off any of the more advanced password creation and guess tools hackers have access to. With the more complex password, the more time it would take for an attacker to gain access to your system and if it is a secure enough password they\u2019ll probably give up.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s best to add in a few symbols if your password allows it as well as numbers. If your passwords require to be changed every 30 days, 6 months etc, you could suffix or prefix your password with a number and increment or decrement that number in the password each time you need to change it, although this can be bad security practice only to do this. Maybe add an additional 16 to the number each time. This way you know the increment and it isn\u2019t just a 1. It\u2019s still best to change your password entirely however.<\/p>\n
You should always change your passwords to each system you log into on a periodic basis, whether it be social media, email or an important company server with sensitive details, at the least every 6 months is a good plan.<\/p>\n
A lot of websites require security questions, such as \u201cwhat town were you born in?\u201d or \u201cwhat was the name of your first pet?\u201d These are good second stage security, after the password login, as they give that little extra security. This 2nd<\/sup> stage of security is good; however, you need to be aware of people that do and don\u2019t know the information who are trying to access your system. A while ago there was stories of people who had their Hotmail accounts broken into as they had met some random person on the internet chat room. They then gave out information that Hotmail asks as a \u201crecover account\u201d option and this way the attacker could break into the account, with this they could send spam to your entire contact list and it appears the attacker was being a new friend, asking questions that made him or her seem interested in you.<\/p>\n The lesson here is you need to be careful of new friends especially and don\u2019t give them too much information.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Disclaimer: This document isn\u2019t a solution to password security. This advice is about how to better understand the risks and how to mitigate them. There will always be people \/ organisations who want to steal your data and break into certain systems. You must think of the possible security risks and mitigate these. From this series of security blog notices you\u2019ll learn that there are more.<\/p>\n If you require security services, please contact us at sales@thecomputersaint.com<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What is a weak password? It seems obvious, but a weak password can be 1 word, or even 2 words. It could be a password that is your mother\u2019s maiden name or something equally personal to you. For example, in…<\/p>\n