Forget Tough Passwords: New Guidelines Advise for Longer and Simpler

If you have struggled to create a strong password, and then struggled even more down the road to remember it, you are not alone.

The old guidelines encouraged people to consider these rules when creating passwords.

  • Make them complicated.
  • Use numbers, question marks, dollar signs and hash marks.
  • Change them regularly.
  • Use different passwords for each app and website.

Now the National Institute of Standards and Technology is about to make all of our lives much easier. The organization recently revised its guidelines for creating passwords, and the new advice sharply diverges from previous rules. The organization suggests keeping passwords simple, long, and memorable. A simple, yet long passphrase is much harder to crack than a complex, but short password. Sites such  How Secure is My Password can offer insights to the time it would take to crack your password. Passphrases such as 'iown2dogsand1cat' are easier to remember and harder to crack. It might take longer to type in a phrase, but the benefits greatly outweigh the risk.

We need to move away from passwords (generally using one word) and begin using passphrases which could be a sentence or multiple words. Not only are you preventing yourself from getting hacked, but they can also be extremely easy to remember. Which is easier to remember: J5bZ>9p! OR I like puppy dogs!?

 

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Published: Aug 28, 2017 2:04pm

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