Password strength is characterized by the time it will take for an attacker to guess it in one way or another. A password that takes seconds, minutes, or hours to crack is unstable. A password that takes months or years to crack is strong.
How to improve password strength
There are several standard recommendations for improving password strength.
- The password should not contain normal words in an unmangled form, because password cracking tools first all iterate over the words in a dictionary.
- The length of the password plays a very important role. It should be at least 8 characters long, but 16 would be much better.
- Passwords are always case sensitive, and you can greatly increase the strength of a password if, for example, you write a couple of letters in it in upper case.
- It is also recommended to use special characters in the password, this also greatly increases its strength.
- Well, adding a few numbers to the password also greatly affects the increase in stability.
What can help us
In principle, there is no need to invent and remember strong passwords, because there are special programs called password managers, and they can do this for you. Of course, you shouldn’t use a password manager that’s taken from nowhere and written by someone else, but there are dozens of well-known, proven, and secure password managers that are used by millions of people.
The essence of the password manager is very simple. You need to come up with and remember only one strong password – for this manager. And then the manager will generate and remember a strong password for each of the services where you register because one of the important security requirements is not to use the same passwords for different services.
If you want to know more about how to make better digital security in your devices, you can follow our blog or reach out to us. We can help you to create the best security package for you and your organization.