Why Simple Passwords are No Longer Sufficient!

Coming up with new and suitable passwords is never fun.

Once upon a time, most people would choose the name of their children or pets, or perhaps a memorable date. That’s because they wanted the password to be memorable. Unfortunately, these passwords just don’t cut the mustard anymore, as they’re just not safe enough!

Hackers and malicious software have become so advanced that it isn’t that hard anymore for someone to guess (or know for sure) the name of your first pet. Anyone out there still using this format needs to spend some time changing their passwords in order to protect their information that is stored online. Updating passwords isn’t a nice job, but it’s an essential one.

Hackers Attack All the Time

We constantly hear about big businesses being victim to a security bug. We read that our private information including names, email addresses, home addresses, passwords, payment details and other information being stolen or at least at high risk of being stolen after a hack or an error made by the business. A recent example of this came from Google+. The G+ security breech gave developers access to 52.5 million users’ private information for 6 days in November 2018.

As users of the Internet, we need to help protect our own data as much as possible by using complex passwords. We expect businesses, big and small to take every possible step to protect our data, but what do we do to protect ourselves? Having simple passwords make it easier for cyber criminals to hack our own accounts. If a person has your email address, they could possibly reset the password to your email and gain access to multiple accounts.

Using the Same Password

If a person was to obtain just one of your passwords, it highly likely that you’ve used the same password for many of your online accounts, making it easy for the criminals to gather more information on you and leaving you open to further attacks such as viruses, malware, ransom attacks and so on.

Change Your Password, On Everything!

It’s time to create new passwords for the accounts you have online. You can use a combination of letters, numbers and possibly symbols depending on the requirements of the website. One option to consider is the use of a phrase, something you’ll remember easier than a list of numbers, but that can still be made using a combination of numbers and letters. For example, a pass phrase could be “IL0v3gr3enPancaK3s” It looks silly but it’s going to be much harder to crack than the name of a child and your date of birth.

Change Your Password - Importance of using secure passwords

You can even use a random password generator, many of which can be found free online. These online tools will create a password of random characters, letters and numbers to a character length of your choice. Just make sure you note down the exact password, or save it to a password management tool, so you don’t forget it yourself!

Securing Your Accounts

Many websites now offer 2 factor authentications. This is a process that asks you to confirm it’s you trying to access your account by sending you a text with a time limited unique code to add to the login page. Again, this can be annoying but it’s a great way to secure your data and stop people from stealing your information, bank details and other private data. The 2-step authentication requires any criminal to have access to your email address, password and your mobile to enter your account.

Help Protect Your Own Data

Businesses must work to protect our information and ensure we’re informed when a cyber-attack takes place. However, we must also do our part to protect our own information. Change your passwords and ensure they are all different to one another to help reduce the risk of your data being stolen.

If you require any assistance changing or managing your passwords, give us a call and we will be more than happy to help.