Five steps to superior passwords

Five steps to superior passwords

Choosing a good password is a critical first step in securing a computer, PDA and other electronic devices. In fact, shared or easy-to-guess passwords account for the majority of recent security breaches on campus.

So, what makes a great password? Marc Scarborough, information security officer at Rice University, offers these tips:

1.    Make it long.

A password of 12 characters is good but longer is even better.

2.    Make it hard to guess.

”Hard to guess” in computer security terms means you shouldn’t pick a word that can be found in a dictionary – of any language.

One suggestion from Scarborough: Think of a sentence you’ll find easy to remember and make a password from the first letter of each word in that sentence. For example: ”My favorite pet is a domestic jungle cat named Frisky von Rat Trapper.” becomes ‘Mfpiadjcnfvrt.’

3.    Use upper- and lower-case and punctuation.

The password in Step 2, Mfpiadjcnfvrt., is 14 characters long, won’t be found in a dictionary, includes upper- and lower-case letters and punctuation. To make it even more difficult to crack, substitute one letter for another punctuation symbol. For instance, Mfpiadjcn@vrt.

4.    Make it easy to remember.

Since it is important not to share passwords or write them down, you need to create a sentence that’s easy to remember, even after a two-week vacation.

5.    Change your password regularly.

Rice’s Scarborough recommends changing passwords when daylight-saving time changes, or every six months.

Read more about password security on the Rice Information Technology Web pages.