Research says 50% of people do not change their passwords and 61% of people reuse their same passwords for different sites. This is great news if you are a hacker, and bad news if you are among those with poor password habits. Fear not, because creating strong passwords, and remembering them, doesn’t have to be difficult. The goal is to create a password that is hard to guess and we have created a recipe for hard-to-guess passwords for you. Once you create your new password, go here to put its strength to the test!

Flip through our presentation that was featured on the SlideShare homepage or continue reading:

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Nonsense

The first ingredient for a really strong password is nonsense. Your password should not be or resemble any real words. Nonsense is difficult for hackers to crack; even for computer programs that are made to crack passwords. A trick to generating a password that is nonsense, yet easy for you to remember, is to think of a sentence and grab the first letter of each word in the sentence.

 

Length 

You want you more than 8 characters for the strongest possible password. The longer your password, the better.

$pec!@l Chara¢ters

Incorporate special characters throughout your password. You can either replace letters with symbols that resemble the letter you are replacing or randomly sprinkle the characters in the password.

UPPER and lower case letters

Use both upper and lower case letters in your password. For more strength, randomly capitalize letters throughout the password: not just the first letter.

USE NUMBERS

Adding numbers adds to the overall variety of your password and can help add to the nonsense of it. You can place numbers where you would have otherwise place letters. For example, you can replace ‘E’ with a ‘3’ or ‘B’ with a ‘8.’ Avoid using birth dates and other numbers that have significance to you when using numbers in your password.

Additional Password Tips

Do not use the same password for multiple sites. If a hacker DOES crack your password, or your password is somehow compromised, you do not want them to have access to all of your other online accounts. Keep different passwords for different sites to prevent a catastrophic data breach

Use a password manager. A password manager can help you keep track of all of the different passwords you create. Here is a list of the best password managers. 

Do not let your internet browser remember your passwords. If your computer were ever stolen or hacked, a criminal could easily access all of your accounts if your browser was set to remember them. Though entering and re-entering your password can get tiresome, the 2 seconds it takes to enter the password is an added security measure.