How Strong Are Your Passwords?

Most people don't realize that computer security starts with them. An easy way to hold off trouble is to use strong passwords that you change every so often.

What is a strong Password? It is a password that is easily remembered by you, contains uppercase letters, lowercase letters, a number or two, a special character and is at least 8 characters in length.

Sounds hard, but it's really easy when you use things you are familiar with.

For example, if I grew up at 245 Lucky Street, I might make my password Lucky245& Notice I've used uppercase and lowercase Letters and I have 3 numbers and a special character.

Here are some variations on the above password: luCky24%, LuckY245$, luckY245*. You can come up with a bunch if you just think about it a little bit.

Another example might be something you like, such as ice Cream. You could change it to 1cecr3@M Notice that I changed the first I in ice cream to the numeral 1. The second e is represented by the number 3, sort of an E in reverse. The "a" became an @ sign.

Why go to all this bother?
It's almost impossible to break strong passwords. Passwords that are easy to break are common words or names (like Mike, Jump, Secret, Car, Emily, or, my favorite, and yours, Password).

Don't think for a minute that someone is actually sitting somewhere on the globe thinking about your password; they've automated all that. They start a software program that goes after known vulnerabilities, or specific targets that contain a lot of valuable data, like credit cards, personal identification, such as social security numbers, date of birth, etc. The software does the work for them.

Why do we need passwords at all? Simply put, it is a matter of authentication. Are you who you say you are, or are you someone who is pretending to be someone else? When you are pulled over by a police officer, the first thing he asks for is license and registration. The license authenticates who you are via the photo, signature and basic information about you like eye color, date of birth, height, weight, address, etc.

The registration authenticates ownership of the vehicle. Passports are a very good form of authentication as well. The bottom line is this, if you don't want someone else looking at your data, use strong passwords to protect it. Here's a good article on the Microsoft Website: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc756109.aspx