A quick guide to building a safe, fast and secure password.

2. We live in a password-driven world, where
between six and twenty characters are the
key to whether you’re able to access your
data, communicate with friends, or make
your online purchases. We now know that
“password”, “iloveyou” and “123456″ are
some of the most common passwords in use.
Heartbleed, AndroidsmsSend are some of the
dangerous viruses discovered just a few
months back that allow intruders to explore
vulnerabilities in your computer and mobile,
to trick servers into getting hold of your
personal data.
Passwords should ideally be different for
every site, long and randomized enough to
stump even the cleverest of computers,
robots and devious humans. Follow these tips
and tricks to take total control of your terms
for access.
Tips for a Strong Password

3. Why make life easier for hackers by having the
same password to all of your important profiles
and accounts? A study by BitDefender showed that
75 percent of people use their e-mail password for
Facebook, as well. If one website password gets
cracked, it means the person with that info now
has access to all of your online accounts. So if you
share the same password for Amazon and
Facebook you can say goodbye to both funds and
friends. Update and change your password
regularly, maybe every six months.

4. Make sure your password is long
enough
Length is an advantage when it comes to your password.
The more characters there are in your password, the
more secure, so don’t be afraid to combine words.
Microsoft suggests that your password should be at
least eight characters in length. Most websites will have
some type of minimum requirement when creating a
password to ensure you don’t end up with an easy-to-
guess four character password. For example, I could
combine the first couple of letters of my family
members name to come up with a word, like if I take the
Simpson family- Bart, Lisa, Maggie, Marge and Homer,
my password could read BaLiMaMaHom.

5. Randomized words are more
secure
Don’t use common word or phrases even if it is
long. A randomized series of characters that include
a mix of letters, numbers and symbols make for a
secure password. Your password should contain a
variety of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers
and symbols.

6. Make up a sentence
Security technologists recommend thinking of a
sentence you can easily remember. It is an excellent way
to come up with a strong password that’s difficult to
guess too. For example, take a sentence like “Jack and
Jill went up the hill,” Now take the first letter of each
word in the sentence, throw in some punctuation and
replace some of those letters with numbers for variety.
That sentence can be converted into a password like
this: JFw1utH!. Don’t tempt fate with “dareu2hackme”,
though.

7. Sing Song
Take a line of your favorite song and use the initial letters
of each word. “I’m all ’bout that bass, ’bout that bass, no
treble” would become “iabTBbTbNt”. Don’t sing it out
loud every time you go to login though, that would be a
dead giveaway.

8. Misspellings work
If you’re going to use words or phrases in your
password, misspelling them is a great way to make them
more difficult to guess. You can do this by adding
symbols and numbers in place of letters. For example, if
you want to use the phrase “I love basketball” in your
password, you should change it to something like
“1LuvBBall15″ to make it more secure.

9. Make The SMaRT
Choice
If you’re still unsure about what makes a strong
password different from a weak password, here are
some examples of passwords that are sure to be cracked
“admin,” “iloveyou” and “aaaaaa.” If it’s the name of
your relatives, your kids, or your pet, favorite team, or
city of your birth, your birthday, anniversary, even your
car license plate number, it’s not a strong password.
Above all don’t let your browser remember the
password for you because it is open to hackers. You’re
now ready to create your own strong passwords. Share
these tips with others but don’t share your passwords!
Check our Smart Technology Services blog for more tips
and articles, http://www.smartts.com/blog/