Strong Password Creation & Management
In light of the recent research published on commonly used passwords amound Internet users, it's clear we need to revisit this very important topic.
Easy to break passwords will continue to be one of the biggest security risks amongst today's computer user.
A few simple changes to how you select your passwords, how often you use them and how you store them can dramatically improve your security.
Listen in as the Data Doctors provide tips and resources so you can better manage this critical process of living in the digital age!
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An easy way of getting password/passphrases longer is to use the initials of a phrase, such as "IpattfotUSoA" (I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America) or a line from a song, "YDwtttrup", (Yankee Doodle went to town to ride upon a pony). From there, you can add a little additional complexity by inserting a numeric digit and a punctuation character, although it's best not to put the extra characters at the very beginning or at the end. Better to put them in the middle, somewhere.
Another completely different approach is to use a password-keeping program such as KeePass or Password Safe (both free). These are more complex, and take some learning, but have a lot of flexibility, in that they allow you to keep entries for every login you have, but even generate random (and very complex passwords), and where you can set them to automatically login for you, as well as set reminders to change passwords regularly. What's particularly useful is that these allow you to use passwords that are totally unrelated to each other for each site, and allow additional flexibility when sites have different rules for passwords (e.g., one site that requires certain characters or a minimum password length, and another site that doesn't allow certain characters or has a maximum password length). http://keepass.info/ KeePass supports both Windows and Mac.