How to choose a secure password (and remember it)

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How to choose a secure password (and remember it)

Picture of a LEGO At-St walker

We’ve all been there, on line trying to make a purchase, obtain information or login to email and asked to create an account/update password before you are able to go any further.  No problem until it asks you to create a password!

We all need to do our bit to reduce cybercrime and we know the most securest passwords are as long as possible, using both upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols……..but how do you remember such complex passwords, how many times have you clicked the link “forgotten password”?

Here at Synium we recommend to our customers they choose a favourite song lyric they will remember, take the first letters of each word from the title and substitute with symbols and numbers where they’re easy to remember.

As an example, the Beatles classic song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and the first line becomes…….

Lucy in the sky with Diamonds

L1t5wD£

Instead of using the letter I we have used number 1,  and used number 5 to replace S (in sky) and added special characters £ at the end because Diamonds cost a bit of money 🙂

What is a special character?

?    Question Mark^    Circumflex
,     Comma]     Right Square Bracket
@   Commercial at+    Plus sign
!      Exclamation Mark|    Vertical line
.      Full stop_    Underscore
#     Hash mark{     Left curly bracket
[      Left square bracket*    Asterisk
$    Dollar sign: –   Colon
/    Forward slash}    Right curly bracket

A bit of trivia for you……Splashdata, a leading provider of password management solutions put together a list of the 10 worst passwords:

passwordmonkey
123456letmein
12345678dragon
abc123111111
qwertybaseball

Probably best to avoid any of the above if you want to remain cyber secure!

Conclusion:

Secure passwords are just one aspect of a secure and safe IT infrastructure – for more information about other aspects take a look at our IT Security page

 

Simon Tonks
simon@synium.co.uk

Owner and MD of Synium who loves his job, his life and the wondrous outdoors - especially when on a golf course, or a bike of any kind (but preferably on a mountain bike going downhill fast).Please get in touch if there is anything IT related I can help you with (or if you want to talk golf or bikes :-)