I always thought I had a pretty good default password (first mistake). It consisted of letters and numbers, and I thought I was pretty clever. Then I started working in IT, and creating passwords for servers and firewalls, not to mention the passwords I create for my blogs and websites. So many different passwords to create, and I want to be able to REMEMBER the passwords I create, so I had to come up with a system where I could use real words that would end up being unrecognizable as words to people trying to crack my password.
Good passwords include ALL of the following:
- At least 14 characters in length
- Use of upper & lowercase letters
- Use of numbers
- Use of special characters
Creating a complex password though can be hard… here are a couple of ways to do it.
1. Think of a sentence and take the first letter of each word. Change vowels to special characters (3 for E, 1 or ! for an I, etc), capitalize anything on one side of the keyboard, lowercase the other.
2. Think of a long word or phrase. Change vowels to special characters, capitalize anything on one side of the keyboard, lowercase the other.
Once you’ve got your P@ssw0rd all set go to Microsoft’s Password Checker tool, and see if yours passes the test!
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I swear I’d never remember!
Is it ok to have the same password for everything, if it’s chosen according to these guidelines?
The short answer is no, you shouldn’t have the same password for everything because once one gets hacked they would have everything else…
That being said I have the same password for different “groups” in my life, and different ones for different parts of my blogs and websites, because those are more likely to get hacked. So for my database there is one password, for my login to my domain is a different password, to login to my wordpress is yet another password, for my banking (all banking like credit card logins, bank account, etc) is another password, it’s tough I know, but piece of mind is nice.
I bet you knew I’d chime up on this topic!
My (somewhat neglected) blog: http://www.security4all.wordpress.com is all about password security and offers other password generation methods.
Also worth noting is to use a secure password keeper!