Communications and Security: The Importance of Using Secure Passwords

    Did you know that the top three most commonly used passwords are password, 123456, and 12345678? These are all extremely easy for a person to guess, and they are even easier for a program to crack. Imagine someone getting access to your bank account because of a weak password or someone being able to access your email and impersonate you. Even with the fail-safe mechanisms present today, there is no guarantee that you will be able to protect your data before it is compromised. Today's blog will talk about password security and how to make sure your personal data is well-protected.

From Spectrum.ieee.org

     There is a misconception that a password that is harder to remember is harder for a program to crack. For example, the password D0g............... is more difficult for most programs to crack than the password PrXyc.N(n4k77#L!eVdAfp9, even though the former is much easier to remember. This is because there are more characters in the dog password, creating a larger amount of possibilities that it could be. It also contains at least one upper case letter, one lower case letter, one digit, and one symbol. Likewise, the password Tr0ub4dor&3 is generally considered to be weaker than the easily remembered password correcthorsebatterystaple, as a result of the larger amount of entropy generated by having more letters. However, I recommend having at least one upper case letter, lower case letter, digit, and symbol in your passwords.

Image taken from xkcd

     Knowing to make longer passwords instead of more complicated ones is an easy way to create more secure passwords. This doesn't mean that your password is foolproof though. It might be compromised eventually, possibly through the website's password database being hacked or some other circumstances, and thus you want to have different passwords for each of your accounts. You can use similar passwords for each with something related to the website url behind it. For example, an easily remembered password could be Dog...............15blogspot for this site. This way, if one of your passwords is revealed, your other accounts should be relatively safe. Go change your passwords now and then come back to read my other posts!