Two Easy Steps to Create a Strong Password

All of these options rank in the top ten most common passwords. Hackers like to move from victim to victim. So if you have a strong password, and they’re not able to get into your system or account, they will most likely move along to the next person.

Another great suggestion is enabling two-factor authentication. If someone does sign into your account, you’ll get a notification via email or text message. This allows you to accept or deny the access attempt. That will let you know that someone is trying to gain access to your account, too, so you can change the password.

To create a strong password, know that it isn’t hard. Using complicated word-number-symbol combinations are hard to remember. But these recommendations are easy to remember and hard for hackers to break!

Two Easy Steps to Create a Strong Password

1. Use a sentence. You don’t want to include anything that’s personal to you in that sentence. That includes the names of your kids, where you were born, your favorite sports teams, or similar information. You also don’t want to use lines from a song, movie, or poem. Hackers can easily test your password with pre-existing information.
2. Replace one letter with a number, and keep spaces. For instance, you can write ‘T0day’ instead of ‘Today’. Keeping spaces is easy to remember. Many people don’t have spaces in their passwords, and it’s just like writing a normal sentence when you write it out.

The security of your bank account, Netflix account and email inbox depends on how well you safeguard your many passwords.

Password management is important. If you like keeping your passwords written down on a physical sheet of paper, we encourage you to purchase a safe to keep that password locked up. If you end up leaving your home to go on vacation, or you’re having people come over to watch your house or sit your dogs, that safe can give you peace of mind.

If you prefer a digital version, there are many different password managers out there today. Applications like LastPass, DashLane, OnePassword are all useful to make your life easier when it comes to managing passwords. What they do is store all your passwords behind one master username and password. They store them in a digital ‘vault’, where you can access them in the future if you need to. Or, they can provide autofill for websites, so you don’t have to remember those passwords.

There are positives and negatives to password managers. Some positives are that they store all your passwords in one place, which makes them easy to find. They also make it easy for you to use autofill on multiple websites.

The downsides are that they are secured behind one username and password. If you lose it, there’s a chance you could lose access to all of your passwords. Another downside is that if someone gains access to that one username and password, they could access your entire password vault. Still, they are great tools to use.

If you would like to have a one-on-one session with a TekHelper to help you create your own password and family technology security plan, simply schedule a TekHelp session today!