“So I can’t win then, can I? It sounds like you want my passwords to be 25 letters long and look like the cat danced on my keyboard. How on earth do I win?”
- You ( now frustrated!)
Fear not, there is hope. Combine what you have learned and consider the following.
- Use many words but include made up ones.
- Do put in numbers but not dates, place them at odd points.
- It’s good to substitute with special characters but avoid being pr3dict4bl3.
- Above all, ensure it’s of a decent length.
- Make sure it’s as complex as possible.
So now you should be able to think of something very unpredictable, resisting dictionary attacks, mask and combinations thereof as well as being effectively un brute force-able. All while remaining with a password that is memorable enough.
Gretmongerthirty34four&
Off the top of my head this is what I came up with, 22 characters and clocking in at 19 septillion years to crack and human enough to remember with some slight effort. If you are the sort of person who doesn’t so much re-use the same password but makes slight alterations to existing ones, you can apply that here as well.
Sorpmongerfourty43three&
Gretrangerthirty34four&
A slight change in human terms, but much less predictable.
So you read all that, your head hurts, your passwords are terrible and you can’t be bothered! Don’t worry there’s a solution for you as well. Get a password manager, you can consolidate all your weekly password generation into one giant password vault. Have the manager generate any size and complexity of password you want, it will store it in a heavily encrypted database, which you can then unlock by entering one single password (which you definitely need to remember and it needs to be strong). This does come with risks however, forgetting your main password would mean forgetting everything all at once, and you might need a password when you don’t have access to your password manager.
Ben
Ben is looking after our clients’ IT systems and backups, making sure their equipment and infrastructure are responsive and reliable.
If you would like to talk to Ben about anything mentioned in this article please let me know and I will ask him to contact you and answer your questions.
Kamila
General Manager
Octagon Technology Ltd
