General Security - Monday, June 2, 2008 23:23 - 0 Comments

Good password security policy

What makes a strong password?

To an attacker, a strong password should appear to be a random string of characters. The following criteria can help your passwords do so: The object when choosing a password is to make it as difficult as possible for a cracker to make educated guesses about what you’ve chosen. This leaves him no alternative but a brute-force search, trying every possible combination of letters, numbers, and punctuation.

Password Length

Each character that you add to your password increases the protection that it provides many times over. Your passwords should be at a minimum 8 characters in length but 14 characters or longer is ideal.

Combining letters, numbers, and symbols.

The greater variety of characters that you have in your password, the harder it is to guess so it is a good idea to use the whole keyboard including letters, numbers and special characters.

What makes a weak password?

¤ Avoid sequences or repeated characters
¤ Avoid using only look-alike substitutions of numbers or symbols ie: substituting a i with a 1
¤ Avoid using your login name or adding a 1 at the end of your username as a password
¤ Avoid dictionary words in any language.
¤ Never use a blank password

For a list of deafult passwords please visit this link

Article written by MyComputerAid.com