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We’ve all been there, on line trying to make a purchase, obtain information or login to email and asked to create an account/update password before you are able to go any further. No problem until it asks you to create a password!
We all need to do our bit to reduce cybercrime and we know the securest passwords are as long as possible, using both upper and lower case letters, numbers and symbols… but how do you remember such complex passwords, how many times have you clicked the link “forgotten password”?
Here at Synium IT, we recommend to our customers they choose a favourite song lyric they will remember, take the first letters of each word from the title and substitute with symbols and numbers where they’re easy to remember.
As an example, the Beatles classic song ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’ and the first line becomes…….
Lucy in the sky with Diamonds
L1t5wD£
Instead of using the letter I, we have used number 1, and used number 5 to replace S (in sky) and added special characters £ at the end because Diamonds cost a bit of money!!
What is a special character?
| ? Question Mark | ^ Circumflex |
| , Comma | ] Right Square Bracket |
| @ Commercial at | + Plus sign |
| ! Exclamation Mark | | Vertical line |
| . Full stop | _ Underscore |
| # Hash mark | { Left curly bracket |
| [ Left square bracket | * Asterisk |
| $ Dollar sign | : – Colon |
| / Forward slash | } Right curly bracket |
A bit of trivia for you……In 2012 Splashdata, a leading provider of password management solutions put together a list of the 10 worst passwords:
| password | monkey |
| 123456 | letmein |
| 12345678 | dragon |
| abc123 | 111111 |
| qwerty | baseball |
Probably best to avoid any of the above if you want to remain cyber secure!
Conclusion:
Secure passwords are just one aspect of a secure and safe IT infrastructure – for more information about other aspects take a look at our IT Security page.
About the Author
Janet Tonks is client services manager at Synium IT – helping organization operate efficiently and productively with appropriate, secure and reliable IT systems.
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