May 4th is World Password Day!
Passwords are ever-present in our daily life and they play an important role in protecting ourselves.
To highlight World Password Day here are some do’s and don’ts for your passwords:
Don’t
- Use a password that is easily guessed such as your birthday, your dog’s name, etc.
- Re-use your password across multiple apps or web sites. Also, don’t use similar passwords with one or two characters different.
- Share your password with anyone
- Write your password on a piece of paper
Cybercriminals have many techniques they use to compromise passwords and they often look for people who have not followed safe password practices. Their ability to crack passwords have improved greatly and can crack an 8-character password with upper case and lower case letters, numbers and special characters in minutes; whereas a 12-character password can take years.
So what can we do to have better passwords?
Do
- Use strong passwords – use 12 characters or more and ensure the password has a combination of lower case and upper case letters, numbers and special characters (!$#%*&).
- Have a unique password for each service – If an attacker gets one password the first thing they will do is try it on many different accounts to see if they are reused.
- Enable multi factor authentication (MFA) – MFA or two-factor authentication (2FA) provides another step in the validation. A unique code is sent via text, email or an app that you set up and this code must be entered as a second step in the sign in process.
- Use a password manager – If you have many unique passwords it may be difficult to remember them all. Use a password manager to help create and store long and unique passwords for each service.
To learn more about how you can protect yourself from fraud and cybercrime see How to keep yourself safe from fraud
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