From the course: Working with Computers and Devices

Strategies for creating secure passwords

From the course: Working with Computers and Devices

Strategies for creating secure passwords

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- [Instructor] Creating strong passwords is vitally important to maintaining the security of your account on your computer, and also for keeping yourself safe online. If your password is easily guessed, all of your documents, photos, and other files could potentially be viewed by anyone with access to your computer. When you first create an account on your operating system, or when an account is created for you by someone administering your computer, a password is created for you to access your account. You can change your password at any time, which you may want to do if you feel your password isn't strong enough, or that someone may have guessed your password. But what exactly makes for a strong password? Conventional wisdom often suggests these guidelines. Your password should be at least eight characters in length. Short passwords are easier to guess. It should be a combination of letters, numbers, and symbols. There should be at least one capital letter, and you'll want to avoid making it the first letter, as that's a pretty common practice. You also want to have at least one number and at least one symbol. Exclamation points and hashtags are pretty common, though, so try lesser-used symbols like the greater or lesser than symbol or a comma. Also avoid using dates, numbers, or names people know or can find out are associated with you, at least as the only part of the password. So don't use your birth date or your dog's name or your maiden name, for example. Lastly, avoid writing down your password on paper. If you have to write it down, keep it physically secure or locked away, and not just sitting next to your computer. Now with that said, how do you create a secure password that you can remember? There are different schools of thought on this. One suggestion is to think of a short phrase that has meaning to you, but not a direct connection. For example, "four score and seven years ago". To make that into a password, I could change it to 4s&7Ya. So in this case, the 4 represents four, the lowercase S stands for score, the ampersand stands for the and, which also has the benefit of being a less commonly used symbol, the 7 for the seven, the Y for the year, which I capitalized in this case, and the A for ago. So this is a fairly secure password with a key phrase that you can keep in your head without writing it down. Now, it doesn't have at least eight characters, so I might add some symbols I'll easily remember before and after the phrase. Now, alternately, you can think of your password as a pass phrase, and come up with a sentence comprised of at least four to five words. For example, MyDogMaxIsSuperKeen! Or BiscottiGoesGreatWithCaramelCoffee!! Even though both of those examples go against the suggestion of not using exclamation points as your special character, and neither of them include numbers, they're both long enough that they'd be very difficult for someone to guess, unless they're phrases you often say out loud. Now, a powerful computer might be able to guess these passwords given enough time, but most systems lock you out after you exceed a reasonable number of password attempts, usually around 10 attempts. So passwords should be complex, but they also need to be memorable so you can enter them relatively easy when you need to log in. Be sure to take some time to develop your own strong password for your login information on your computer.

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