Posted by Leyre August 19, 2009
The first thing you must do in order to protect your computer and data is to create a safe password, especially in these days, with the prominence of social networks. People tend to use easy-to-remember passwords, but this is a risk, as hackers can then easily access your confidential information. It is common sense, or would you leave the door of your car unlocked just because it is easier to open it? You wouldn´t, right? Same happens with password safety. Here go a few useful tips.
DONT´s when creating a password
- Never use passwords that can be found in a dictionary. They can be cracked with clever – and even not-so-clever – password hacking programs.
- Never use password containing less than 8-characters long. The shorter the password is, the easier it gets to guess it.
- Never place numbers after the password if the password Word can be found in a dictionary. It is best to insert numbers and special characters in between a word or replace some of the letters by special characters, for example, Charles – Ch@rlE$
This is a little safer. - Your cat’s name is not unique. Leave it alone 😉 Ditto your name, your birthday, your mum’s maiden name or your birthday.
DO´s when creating  a strong password
- If you want to have a password which is easy to remember but hard to guess, memorize a sentence. Then, use the initial of each of the words of the sentence as the password. Then add a final point or a special character (!, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *) at the end, followed by two numbers and a capital letter.For example: April is the month of rain – ( Aitmor@05 )
- Always use a password that is between 8-14 characters, minimum 8.
- Combine capital and lower case letters in your password.
- And if you do need to write it down, try not to do it on a piece of paper entitled “Internet Banking Passwords” 🙂
- Change your password every 30 days.
- Make sure the user name and password are different
For more information, check out PandaLab´s blog post on Social networking, Passwords and privacy and watch the following video to quickly review the most important tips!!
What do you think about this article? Do you want to share your experiences with us? We would love to hear from you!!
Panda Security specializes in the development of endpoint security products and is part of the WatchGuard portfolio of IT security solutions. Initially focused on the development of antivirus software, the company has since expanded its line of business to advanced cyber-security services with technology for preventing cyber-crime.
6 comments
Good hints Leyre! Thanks for sharing. I myself use those guidelines together with password managers since some years to create “most cryptic, safe and not reocurring” passwords. For example Keepass (open source) or Roboform are really nice and safe to use.
Just one easy question. How do you remember them??? I’m not gonna say I use my children’s name as a password but what tricks do you use to remember all those different passwords you should change every 30 days??? Do these programs insert it automatically for you?? 😉
Regarding password length vs. password complexity (most people have a hard time remembering long complex passwords), you should always opt for longer passwords. A good tip might be to not even think of them as “words” but rather as pass-phrases… someting like “The sun 1s sh1n1ng, the w34ther is blue” would make a good passphrase and it’s quite easy to remember (just don’t use this one now 😉 ).
The reason for this is that it’s harder to crack long passwords than complex ones. This doesn’t mean that it will be secure forever, just that it will take the attackers a longer time to figure it out.
There are also some security experts arguing that you’re more secure choosing a long and extremely complicated password and then write it down on a piece of paper that you carry in your wallet (http://preview.tinyurl.com/cconl6), hehe 🙂 I wouldn’t do that though 😉
Instead, I would use a tool such as Password Safe (http://www.schneier.com/passsafe.html) to store all of my passwords in a secure fashion. The complexity really isn’t an issue as you can just cut-and-paste them from the tool.
Changing passwords every thirty days on all services you use (mail, twitter, facebook, myspace, etc. etc.) sounds good but I bet only a very small percentage of people do that unfortunately.
Good advice overall in the post 😉
i want help to creat account on panda security website
Dear Jagannath, can you please post your problem in our tech support Forum? http://support.pandasecurity.com/forum/