How to Create A Memorable Password
Passwords are still the primary means of security control in any online or offline account meant to protect date, accounts and basically anything on computers or computer controlled. Though that, passwords are inadequate as the only security control that we use. A study was conducted that included 30 million passwords found that almost half of these passwords used names and common words from the dictionary or sequential characters such as ‘qwerty’. Though other forms of security measures have been drawn up, for the average computer user, the password is and will still remain a barrier between hackers and your information. Here are a few tips to help you create a password that is secure and memorable:
1. No Personal Information. That includes your full names, names of your children, your spouse, pets and even your favorite sport teams. Never ever choose a password that has anything personal to it as even a novice hacker can easily find out.
2. No real words. Apart from using personal words, you should also avoid using words found in the dictionary as it can be easily cracked by password software.
3. Mix Character Types. Take advantage of a passwords’ case sensitive feature and use both upper and lower case letters to make it more difficult. Just don’t capitalize the first letter but at least the first letter of each break in the words. You can also throw in some special characters such as @ for ‘A’ and $ for ‘S’.
4. Use a Phrase. Phrases that you remember from movies or even your favorite movies can be used as passwords. You can even use designer’s names with there most popular fragrance of fashion label as your password. Just remember when doing this, use a combination of 2 names or 2 products rather than just sticking to one. You can also add in a number as the birth year or date of the designer combined with yours for a more effective password.
5. Use a Tool. More often than not, users choose passwords that are easy to crack because they are easy to remember such as your dog’s name rather than some combination of special characters and names that you have a hard time recalling but this is far more effective in security and passwords that can be remember.
You can use a password management tool to help you store complex passwords. This tool has a good impact on security as it enables you to use stronger passwords for various Web sites, accounts, and applications without having to remember them all. Unfortunately, if someone cracks the password for this tool, they would have access to all the other passwords stored inside.
With Windows XP release, Windows has a Credential Manager that allows users to save passwords and provides a single sign-on solution. The vault is automatically unlocked when you log into Windows unlocks the vault and the vault then applies the credentials as needed to access the various sites and applications that you want to get into.