How Secure Is My Password?

Password Examples – Good and Bad

If you and your team are creating your own passwords, then the following examples will hopefully highlight what to avoid, while providing inspiration to create something secure.

It's important to be honest with yourself, here. We all slip into bad habits when it comes to online security. But, using variations of any of the bad passwords listed below is a recipe for danger, and could put your business in danger.

Don't wait until something goes wrong. Update your passwords to stronger ones now, while your accounts are secure, and you won't regret it.

How are Passwords Cracked?

It's not unusual for regular, everyday people to have their passwords guessed by someone. It could be a suspicious spouse, nosey roommate, or even a child guessing the password to unlock blocked content. More seriously still, this is a very real threat at a corporate espionage level.

But, there's more to cracking a password than guesswork based on your maiden name, first pet, or alma mater year.

Unlike a “dictionary attack,” where the attacker runs a rapid series of common passwords, a “brute force” attack runs all possible combinations of characters. The rising popularity of brute force attacks has led to a shift in the importance of password strength factors. This changes everything from the recommended complexity to the length of your password.

Password strength tests can be found online, and are a useful tool in securely checking the strength of your existing passwords. Here are some of the world's most popular passwords and how long it takes to hack them:

The Best Ways to Create Secure Passwords

There's some debate over how best to go about creating a secure password. The key is creating something that's easy to enter, and hard to guess.

That's more difficult than it sounds. After all, the easiest passwords to remember are also the ones that a hacker could crack more easily. Your surname? Date of birth? The word ‘passwd'? No, no and no.

However, going to the other extreme is little help, either. If you were to create long strings of unrelated letters, symbols and numbers – unique for every account you log into – this would be a nightmare for you to remember.

Generally speaking, there are three alternative solutions for creating strong passwords:

1. Use a Password Manager – Far and away the best solution, these simple programs create strong passwords for you and your team, then automatically enter them into your online accounts when you log in. You never have to remember the passwords yourself.
2. Create Long Passphrases – These are strings of words put together. For example, a favorite song lyric. They can be easy to remember, but the challenge is coming up with a new one for every account.
3. Combine Letters, Symbols and Numbers – this can help you create truly un-guessable passwords. The downside? They can be a lot more challenging for you to remember.

Let's look at each of these in a bit more detail:

1. Password Managers

These work by generating and storing long strings of letters, numbers, and symbols for each account that you log into. Password managers can automatically paste the correct password into the entry box when needed. This way, they remove the need for you to memorize lots of different passwords. Instead, you only need to remember one master password that will unlock the manager itself.

For businesses, password managers provide some serious peace of mind. You'll be sure that your entire team remains secure, no matter where they sign in from, so you don't have to worry about a brute force attack leading to a costly security breach.

Remember: When using a password manager for important services, you should always check that the service provider supports the use of password managers.

See our breakdown of the Best Password Managers available to help decide which one would be best for you.

2. Creating Long Passphrases

Passphrases are long strings formed from several words packed together.

These passwords can be easy to create and also to remember, especially if the chosen words have some meaning to you.

That said, choosing words with obvious personal meaning, such as family names, may expose risks from targeted hacking.

As attacks are now more focused on trying as many different character combinations as possible, a good method of defense is making the number of possible combinations as large as possible.

Every character added into a password increases the number of possible combinations exponentially, making the use of passphrases an easy way of increasing your protection.

3. Letters/Symbols/Numbers

While using a combination of letters symbols and numbers can add security, especially against a dictionary attack, this is offset by the added difficulty in remembering the password.

As a result, it may be tempting to create a shorter password when using this method. This would be risky, due to increased risk from brute-forcing, a popular method used to crack passwords.

Instead, it's better to rely on combinations of Letters, Symbols and Numbers when creating a password. This method can improve the security of a passphrase, adding symbols or numbers into the word string will provide additional protection against dictionary attacks.

The Importance of Secure Passwords for Businesses

If you haven't noticed the substantial increase in security breaches across the business world, you must have your eyes closed. Companies around the world are padding their security measures, as hackers continue to innovate new and nefarious ways to access business data.

In fact, studies show that 81% of security breaches are caused by poor password security, which means that your business could be at risk if you don't make an effort to keep your team secure.

In earnest, the only way to really ensure that your whole team is taking password strength seriously is with a password manager. They have business-facing plans that give you a bit more control, so you can really see how secure your business is from day to day. Our favorite is LastPass, which you can get started with right now!