How Safe is Your Password?

Password security is vital to prevent fraud and data loss via digital hackers and you need to ensure that your passwords are secure. A popular phrase in the IT world is to remember that passwords are like underpants; meaning that you should change them regularly, keep them private and never share them with anyone!

Here, we’ve listed out seven essential rules for making your password is secure:

  1. A great password looks like this: Care-Mind-Home&&; Read-Hair-None!!; Said-Free-Grew==
  2. DO NOT use part of the company or user’s name.
  3. Make sure it’s not a common single word or name in the English dictionary and preferably not a word or name at all. This includes names of children, spouses, town names, football teams etc. Passwords that contain common words, names or phrases will be cracked very quickly by hacking tools.
  4. Use combinations of upper case, lower case, numbers and symbols in the password.
  5. Not to simply use a common word with some letters replaced by numbers, e.g. Tr4ff1cL1ght5. Hacking algorithms will easily crack these.
  6. Ensure passwords are at least 8 characters long, and preferably the full 16 characters in length supported by Office 365.
  7. Passwords should also not be shared between staff members ever.

If you need to update your business’s IT security systems, our IT consultants at Dragon IS can help. We are certified under the Cyber Essentials scheme and are experts in data security. Please give us a call today.