Here’s a Simple Way to Make a Stronger Password

It doesn’t take much to crack a low-effort password. To put a stop to hackers, you can use one extremely simple tactic: use long, random, complex strings of characters. Unfortunately, this is easier said than done for some people, as remembering passwords is also something that needs to happen. Today, we want to highlight the passphrase and how it can both bolster your password security and make your passwords easier to remember.

The Benefits of a Passphrase

Password cracking software is fairly predictable, once you understand its underlying principles.

Passwords are exponentially more likely to get hacked if you use a simple word or string of characters in your credential. For example, it takes computers about a second to crack a password if it’s a word used in the dictionary and about two seconds to crack a random string of five characters. In any case, simple words and random strings of characters are not going to cut it for security purposes.

That’s because password cracking tools utilize real-world password trends.

These pieces of software know that individuals like to use their pet names, sports teams, and years (like date of births) in their passwords. They understand that users will make a password “complex” simply by adding a number or an exclamation mark to the end. They understand this because these tools use real-world examples of passwords stolen, cracked, and exploited through the dark web.

They’re so intelligent that they know to replace letters with numbers, or vice versa—a trick that many folks rely on for complex passwords.

The key is to use long passwords with multiple random words, with an emphasis on random. There are many ways to do this, but we always like to recommend a site like https://randomwordgenerator.com to give you some examples. A password that has four or more random words becomes significantly more difficult to crack… especially if you add numbers, capital letters, and symbols to make it even more secure.

For example, smallorangetoadcolumn could be a password that would take ages for a computer to guess.

You could then make the password even more secure by injecting some more characters, numbers, and symbols. You could make the password small_Orange()Toad@COLUMN to make a virtually uncrackable passphrase. It’s just one example of how computers are somewhat predictable, even if the technology is impressive in its own right.

Of course, the really important thing here is that the words must be random.

Additionally, these random words should never be reused for your accounts. Furthermore, you should avoid words that have any sort of importance or semblance to your accounts. You don’t want to use your home address, your cat’s name, or the name of the website in your password, as that gives hackers more than enough to try certain combinations and reverse-engineer your password.

In short: use common sense to avoid words that could easily be guessed or plugged into password cracking software.

Password Managers Take the Fun and Frustration Out of Password Creation

If you’re more interested in the “functional” than “fun” part of password generation, you can use a password manager to do the heavy lifting.

A password manager can generate complex and random passwords for your passphrases. In addition, the manager can store and encrypt the passphrases for later use. This means that you don’t have to remember them at all, and you can instead use the password manager to call any passwords as they are needed.

Password managers are great tools to consider—and they absolutely beat those browser-based password management tools, which you shouldn’t be using anyway.

To learn more about password managers and security solutions for your business, call BNMC at (978) 482-2020 today.