Tip of the Week: How to Ensure You’re Using Strong Passwords

Creating secure passwords is not always the easiest thing in the world, as evidenced by many individuals opting to go with the same password for multiple accounts. Thankfully, you have us to help walk you through how to make a secure password. Let’s discuss some of the best practices associated with passwords and how you can get started using them to maintain security for your online accounts. 

Password Best Practices

For your convenience, we’ve put together some password best practices:

• Use complex strings of characters: Your passwords should consist of both upper and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters.
• The longer, the better: The more characters in your password, the more complex and harder to guess it is. A good rule to follow is that passwords should be easy to remember, but hard to guess.
• Opt for passphrases rather than passwords: To help you make passwords easier to remember, consider using passphrases instead. These passphrases can be variants of your password designed to make it harder to guess. For example, if you were going to use a special date that is important to you for a password, you might instead use what happened on that date. So, something like “october@2022” might look something like “IgotmarriedinOCTOBER@2022.”
• Use different passwords for each account: If one password gets hijacked, and you have used that password for each of your accounts, you’ll have a real problem on your hands. Instead, consider using different passwords for each of your accounts.

Now, we know that this is a lot to take in, which is why we have also outlined other methods of securing your accounts below. They build on the security foundation provided by passwords.

Other Solutions to Password Challenges

If your company wants to take its password security initiatives just a step further, we recommend you implement a couple of additional policies and procedures to augment your complex password practices. These include multi-factor authentication and password management solutions.

Multi-factor authentication involves using additional authentication protocols to ensure only authorized individuals are accessing accounts. Typical multi-factor authentication will entail two of the three methods: something you are (biometrics), something you have (smartphone, USB key), and something you know (a password or passphrase).

Password management tools can also be effective for augmenting password security while making the process easier and more efficient. Password managers store your passwords in an encrypted database protected by a master password, then call the passwords as needed for when you access your accounts. Most password managers can generate secure passwords, too, so you’ll never run out of ideas for your credentials. It takes a lot of the struggle out of creating and using secure passwords.

SCW can help you implement all of the best technology solutions for your business. To learn more, contact us at (509) 534-1530.