Your online accounts have passwords on to stop them from being accessed by anyone except you.
Having strong, unique passwords for all your online accounts is essential to keep them secure.
So it’s worth breaking down and understanding thoroughly:
- What is a strong password?
- What is an unique password?
What is a strong password?
Because password hacking is done by fast computers, they can try many combinations very quickly. The best way to keep them out is to have a long password. This takes much longer for a computer to work out. According to American software company Fleetsmith, “a password that is nine characters long will take about two hours to brute force on average with modern computing resources. Adding just a single character to this password length increases the time to brute force to one week”.
The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) in the UK recommends creating a strong password using 3 random words. This is easy to do, easier to remember than random characters and symbols, and creates a long enough password to be strong.
A long password is a strong password!
What is an unique password?
Put simply, an unique password is one that is only used for one account!
It is so tempting to use the same password for multiple accounts – especially since it make
s remembering passwords so much less laborious. But don’t do it! Just don’t!
If the password gets cracked on just one account, hackers know to use the same username and password combination to gain entry to other accounts. Why do they do this? Because they know that so many people use the same combinations across many accounts!
Don’t be one of them!
Has my password been compromised?
Try entering your password into this online checker, to see whether your password has ever been compromised in a known data breach:
How did you get on?
If your password has been compromised, take it as a hint to change it NOW to something strong and unique.
If not, congratulations! Keep using strong and unique passwords for all your accounts, and STAY SAFE ONLINE!!
Datamills is happy to help you with any security questions and concerns you may have. Give us a call any time on 0114 287 0510