- Don’t Use Personal Information. Never use your name your pets name or birthday. These are easy for hackers to guess or find.
- Choose long passwords over a short one passwords should contain at least 10 characters and contain both letters, numbers, upper and lower case.
- Use a passphrase instead of a password, especially if you need something that’s easy to remember like this password (NobleWoodenPullCheese). It would take an I7 computer about 56+ Centuries to break this password.
- Use a Password Generator. Symantec offers a great password generator Norton Password Generator with many options to help you out.
- Change your passwords regularly. Stay a few steps ahead of the hackers by changing your passwords on a regular basis. We always recommend changing your password every three months.
- Choose long passwords over short Ones. The more characters, the more difficult your password will be to break. A three letter password can be broken in an average of 0.0007 seconds. Eleven letters can take up to 4.66 years to crack.
- Don’t use the same password everywhere. So you finally found a great password but you are using it everywhere. A hacker may get lucky and now have access to all your accounts. We recommend different passwords for different levels of security. Some sites don’t have the same password security like the bank VS your kids school lunch password.
- Above all use common sense when creating and storing your passwords. I can’t tell you how many times I have sit at a desk and seen the password written on a sticky on the monitor. If you must write it down put it in a secure place. And always make sure the site is using https: for the password page otherwise your password will be sent over clear text.
Ways to Create and Remember Secure Passwords
