Securing Your Computer Password(s)

The importance of having a secure computer password cannot be stressed enough, both for your computer and your online accounts.  Whether it is email, Facebook, or your financial institution a password that isn't easily guessed is a must!  Make note that corporation policies for passwords vary and they might have their own rules that what you read may or may not follow.

A secure password should be 8 characters or more (remember the longer the better), they should contain both letters and numbers, and even some special characters like !, %, #, etc.  Having a password such as "Pa$$word1" follows this guideline pretty well BUT it is too simple.  A password "000ab123" is another example a password you wouldn't want to use.

Now when you do come up with a decent password to use, if you have issues with remembering them you should keep it noted somewhere OTHER than near your computer.  You can often find random password generators online, www.random.org is an example.  On their website you enter some basic criteria and the web site will generate some passwords that you could use if you so choose.

Another option and it is one that I have done a couple times.  You can place your hands above your keyboard and drop your fingers down and without looking just randomly type some keys.  If you choose this route, I would suggest opening a generic word processor (such as Notepad or TextEdit) and doing this in that program.  You could end up with a password that looks like this:  w0cEh;onw.  This is actually a pretty strong password that would be pretty hard to crack.

 Another method is to make a very lengthy password but something simple that you would be able to remember it without too much difficulty.  Using an entire phrase could be more secure than random text, provided of course you mix it up and replace letters with numbers and use capital letters.  The password " R0wR0wR0wYourBoat! " is a good example of a simple but still complex password.  It uses capital letters, numbers and special characters - the explanation mark at the end.  

According to the website How Secure Is My Password the phrase password example is strong and they estimate it would take SEVERAL years to crack.  Actually by the time the password would be cracked, according to the website, it's most likely whatever computer or account is being hacked will have long died out - along with you and me and the hacker.

Now that you have made note of a decent password the next thing you need to remember is not to use the same password for more than one thing.  Someone who gains access to your computer is likely to try that password on any bookmarked websites of importance.  Once they get in, they could easily lock you out just by changing the password AND recovery email addresses are good but once someone has access to your account they can change that as well.  

This brings us to the question, 'How often should I change my password?'  This is often debatable but recent research has shown that frequent password changes doesn't improve security at all.  Once upon a time, back in the days of mainframes, some Department of Defense contractors had calculated how long it would take to crack the passwords used on the mainframe and the result was "several months".  This led to a suggestion to change passwords once a month, this suggestion ended up spreading and became canon for the next several decades.  (Source)  Passwords to your financial accounts you may want to change every now and then however.

Myself personally, I rarely change my passwords but maybe once a year or three.  So next time your significant other says you don't change it as often as you should.  Just remind him or her, you don't work for the DoD.