Tips for Creating Strong Passwords

STRONG PASSWORDS AND HOW TO CREATE THEM

Computer security includes the use of strong passwords for your network logon and for the Administrator account on your computer.

For a password to be strong, it should:

a. Be at least seven characters long. Because of the way passwords are encrypted, the most secure passwords are seven or 14 characters long.
b. Contain characters from each of the following three groups:
GROUP:                                                                                               EXAMPLES:

LETTERS (uppercase and lowercase)                                            A, B, C… (and a, b, c…)

NUMERALS:                                                                                       0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

SYMBOLS:(all characters not defined as letters                         ` ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ + – = { } | [ ]
or numerals,)                                                                                       \ : ; ‘ < > ? , . /

1. Have at least one symbol character in the second through sixth positions.
2. Not contain your name or user name.
3. Not be a common word or name.

Passwords can be the weakest link in a computer security scheme. Strong passwords are important because password cracking tools continue to improve and the computers used to crack passwords are more powerful than ever

Password cracking software uses one of three approaches: intelligent guessing, dictionary attacks, and automation that tries every possible combination of characters. Given enough time, the automated method can crack any password. However, it still can take months to crack a strong password.

This article was generously provided by Ed Berkowitz.