Importance of Having Strong Passwords

With computers and the internet today chances are you have quite a few passwords to remember. Most users use the same password in multiple places and use the same pattern if they have create multiple passwords.

Roger Grimes writes at InfoWorld how easily the majority of users passwords can be guessed and that these days passwords need to be longer than the typical 6-8 characters.

"Most professional password guessers know there is a 50 percent chance that a user's password will contain one or more vowels. If it contains a number, it will usually be a 1 or a 2, and it will be at the end. If it contains a capital letter, it will be at the beginning, followed by a vowel. The average person has a working vocabulary of 50,000 to 150,000 words, and they are likely to be used in the password. Women are famous for using personal names in their passwords, and men opt for their hobbies. "Tigergolf" is not as unique as CEOs think. Even if you use a symbol, an attacker knows which are most likely to appear: ~, !, @, #, $, %, &, and ?."

If you haven't already you should consider lengthening your passwords to more than eight characters especially on login information for your bank etc. The most secure thing to do is use a random password generator like the one built into LastPass. I use LastPass to remember my passwords and sometimes to generate passwords for the best security. LastPass has plugins for all the popular prowsers and you can login to your account from any web browser and look up a password.

I recomend using LastPass to make managing all your login information easy and secure. Just make sure to setup LastPass with a secure password you can remember.

For a local non cloud based solution try KeePass.