As you may have read in the news, thousands of passwords worldwide have been hacked, leaving sensitive information vulnerable to theft. Hackers are becoming more proficient at creating programs designed to run dictionary words and common combinations against passwords; they can scan through thousands in just minutes. In order to protect your sensitive information from these online thieves and increase systems security, it is critical to develop unique passwords for every application or website you log in to. How strong are your passwords? Will they stand up to the programs hackers are developing?
A common mistake people make is choosing what they believe is a difficult password and using it for all of their applications and sites. While it may be somewhat tedious, creating a unique password for each instance is extremely important to protect your data. Should a hacker manage to figure out the password you use for everything you do online, they will have a wealth of sensitive information about you including but not limited to banking information, credit card numbers and data for your business. By using some of the following suggestions you can create secure passwords for everything you do online and they will be easy for you to memorize.
• Create lengthy passwords. The longer passwords are, the harder they are to break and typically look for easy access.
• Use combinations of letters in both upper and lower cases, numbers and symbols to make it complicated for hacker programs to run possibilities to figure out your passwords.
• Think of phrases that are meaningful to you and form acronyms using the above combinations to represent the phrases. For example, the song title “Blue Suede Shoes” might become bLu3_SU3D3_sh03s. While it does not look meaningful to anyone else, you understand it.
• If you are worried you will not remember your passwords you can disguise the name of the application within your phrase. Using the example we created for a bank account login, you could add a dollar sign to the end to represent money. If you must write down your passwords do not keep them near your computer where they are easy to find.
Your systems security is highly dependent on creating unique passwords that hackers will not be able to break. Contact Revolution Networks for consultation and I.T. services to ensure your valuable data is protected.
