Password Strength: From Passwords to Pass-Phrases
Libraries are a great place to get your information from! So, when I found myself online requesting holds on books to borrow this week, I pursued their website pleased to find a new ‘IT Blurb’ section. Blurb #1 is dedicated to creating a strong password and Blurb #2 advocated for the beneficial use of Anti-virus and Anti-malware. It is encouraging to see Northern Library Systems share these great reminders. I encourage you to check out their new posts bi-weekly as they intend to cover a multitude of related topics.
As you may have noticed, websites have a variety of sign-in options when it comes to passwords. The more relaxed sites have no minimal requirements or gages testing password strength at creation. These are not websites you want to be signing into, but if you are, it is best to know how to best protect yourself.
“While short, simple passwords are convenient, they are not as secure as longer, more complex ones. By using longer passwords with both upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, symbols, and punctuation, you can significantly decrease the odds of someone being able to gain access to your account(s)”. Blurb #1
Using a pass-phrase instead of a single password is highly recommended in order to increase the complexity of a password therefore making it more difficult to guess or hack.
One of the more common templates for passwords is to use the current month followed by the year, for example: January2020. However, this can be made much stronger by combining many different characters into a phrase, a much more complex pass-phrase can be created.
For example: From January2020 to Myfavouritemonthisj@nuary01!
Changing your password every 3 – 6 months and using a different password for each of your logins is recommended.