The Infamous Password
Passwords may not be the favourite piece of your workday, however, I have a theory – if I could share with you the value of a password, and the reality of how simple they can be to create; then passwords may not be the monster you avoid.
PASSWORD ARCHITECT
When you get that notice “..your password expires in 5 days.” instead of feeling anxious or aggravated, let’s simplify what exactly a secure password is, so you can design yours with confidence.
Complexity
Whilst it’s important to make sure your password isn’t guessable, is it really effective to substitute letters for numbers? Cyber criminals can be anyone, from the antisocial youth living in their parents basement, to your colleague who is kind, has a family, and really gives no reason to suspect otherwise. As humans, we tend to follow similar patterns, and something you may feel is distinctly unique likely isn’t.
When looking at creating a secure password, stop and use a sentence as your password, known as a passphrase. “A positive memory from your past that won’t change. And remember that you can use SPACE between each word in most systems,” says Per Thorsheim, founder of PasswordsCon. Not only are passphrases easier to remember and often complex, but they’re also going to be longer, which is where the true security lies.
Dean Kelshall, Senior Manager at Baringa, thinks the following:
“The reasons humans fail at passwords is that we need so so many of them. One for hotmail, one for gmail, one for work, one for Facebook… the list continues ad infinitum. So we cheat (easy passwords, repeat passwords, increment the last digit) and we therefore become a weak link. Make passwords more memorable, longer, and change less, and we will all be better off.”
*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from The State of Security authored by Tripwire Guest Authors. Read the original post at: https://www.tripwire.com/state-of-security/featured/infamous-passwords/
