Have you ever lost your car keys? Thus leaving you in a situation of being stuck with nowhere to go. Well, that’s exactly what happens when you don’t look after and remember your passwords. Even worse you write it down on a piece of paper that you misplace and someone else runs off at the driver’s seat of your website.
Here are some of our password security tips to keep your content safe.
Dude Where’s My Car Keys
Have you ever lost your car keys? Thus leaving you in a situation of being stuck with nowhere to go. Well that’s exactly what happens when you don’t look after and remember your passwords. Even worse you write it down on a piece of paper which you misplace and someone else runs off at the drivers seat of your website.
Rather than give you advice on picking login details I’ll suggest what not to use. If I told you exactly how I pick login details in a few hours you might workout my logins and be running wild on my sites or even worse any shopping sites I use and be spending my hard earned cash.
Password Security Tips – Numerical Value
The average person can remember about 7 digits in his/her mind and that doesn’t stay there very long. How many times to do you have to check your own phone number? If your like me pretty much every time I’m asked what my mobile number is. Apart from “password” “12345678” is probably the most used passwords worldwide. If I need Wi-Fi and see a password-protected network, it’s the first two passwords I’d try. Don’t make your information, sites and networks so easy for others to access.
Password Security Tips – Bad Dates
I imagine the number of people using birthdays, anniversaries etc for login details probably runs into millions. The major flaw in this is with the freedom of information available on the Internet it’s pretty easy to find these details.
You may be a bit of a loner and have no friends so feel like nobody would remember your birthday anyway, however for those that don’t bother to change your Facebook or other social network privacy settings you really are an easy target. Even a post of a birthday present or cake might be enough to make it pretty clear it’s that special date.
Password Security Tips – Mix it up
The best login details are a mix of upper case, lower-case, number. Of course it makes sense to make your login details personal to you but crucially don’t make them personally about you. You might be happy to just use the forgotten password option every time. Then you have to create a new password, which gives you yet another password to remember.
I’m sure you have noticed that many sites won’t let you use a password without certain characters etc. The main key to remembering your passwords is practice and familiarity. Why not just rely on the remember me feature like Icloud keychain on Mac or Credential Manager for Windows? Well because if you find yourself having to use someone else’s equipment or someone needs to log in on your behalf and you’ve no idea what your login details are you have a real problem.
Password Security Tips – Ultimate Security
The damage of someone getting hold of your login info by you failing to making them less easy to guess can be both financially and content destructive. Like having a safe but leaving the door wide open for some opportunist to come along a take your valuables you should give yourself the ultimate peace of mind with a password generator.
I recommend Norton Password Generator. This gives you safe, secure strong passwords and allows you to set the parameters if the password has to contain mixed characters, a minimum length etc.
Password Security Tips – Password Managers
If you become overwhelmed with all your login details it might be time for you consider lessening the strain on your brain. More recently password managers have become increasingly popular. I suggest trying out 1Password or Dashline, both these services offer you a way to store all of your login details. These also give you time saving features for filling in forms on sites using the login details you have stored.
Most password managers give you added option to sync your passwords across devices, which is pretty sweet. Don’t worry though these companies don’t have access to your data they merely give you somewhere to store your details. Only you the account holder can edit and view this information. Password generators are built into both services and you can even send encrypted passwords should you need to share a password with others.
Password Security Tips – Unwanted access
Unfortunately not every employee is going to leave on good terms, therefore if an employee leaves it is so crucial to remove their login capabilities. You never know how malicious they might decide to be. It can sometimes be good practice if your logins are for accessing something holding particularly sensitive or non backed up information for you to change your login password on a regular basis. This is much more paramount if your company has perhaps a high staff turnover.
Password Security Tips – Proceed with Caution
Am I saying you have to be super cautious over every password you use? No, we’ve all quickly signed up to some new trial version software with some spur of the moment software, that’s just what happens. However, when not knowing your obscure generated passwords or username means you can’t get into your own website that’s a problem. You’re desperate to add that exciting new content or remove a potentially damaging even slanderous comment.
Using Password generators to create strong yet obscure logins has the potential to leave you with impossible to remember passwords. If you must write down your passwords at least try and be clever by perhaps hiding them as a phone contact that will only mean something to you.
Eager to learn more about passwords security? We recommend you to read this article – Secure Passwords 101: Why They Matter + How To Create Them.
