How To Creating Strong Password

Given how valuable your passwords are, it’s important that they be secure, yet not too hard to remember. Not only do passwords protect your Facebook information, your personal blog and your e-mail account, but also many accounts linked to your credit card, such as your Amazon, eBay and PayPal accounts...

Creating a strong password is one of the most important (and overlooked) security measures you can take to ensure cyber security. One string of letters and numbers is all that protects you from a clever hacker who wants to start mucking around with your account. Luckily there are easy ways to generate passwords that are strong AND easy to remember. Read on for useful password creation tips, what to avoid when crafting a password, and helpful alternatives for password storage.

1. Use Your Keychain to Store Passwords, or Use a Password Manager

While you have a really secure password, you still don't want to use it on all your web sites. You can use Mac OS X's keychain to store passwords - this is what "remembers" passwords when you enter them in Safari, along with the passwords you use for Mail and other programs. You can also use one of many programs that store passwords, but make sure that the master password you use for this software is as strong.

2. Make a Passphrase

Did you know that you could make a password out of your favorite quote, line from a movie, or song lyric? "Passphrases" are not only easy to remember but unique to you as well. When creating a passphrase you still need to keep our stated rules in mind.
For example:
A Sci-Fi fan could make their password “TM0LI-42” (The Meaning of Life is 42) or “HelpMe0bi-WanKan0b1”
A classic rock fan could make their password “Sw33t-Home-Alabama” or “While-My-Guitar-Gently-W33ps”
History buffs could take Ben Franklin’s quote "Man will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants" and make their password “MwubgbG0bt-BF”
If you don’t have a favorite quote you can still use this method to create a secure password. By using your favorite food or the car you drive you could make a sentence that is just as memorable. For example, my usual order at the cafeteria is a cheeseburger (medium well) with no onions or tomatoes. My password could then be “CBMW-wN00T.” Get creative and see what sticks!

3. Variety is the Spice of Life

There are four types of characters you can use in passwords:

lower-case letters (a, b, c)
upper-case letters (A, B, C)
digits (1, 2 3)
"special characters," which include punctuation (. ; !) and other characters (# * &)
There are 26 lower-case letters, 26 upper-case letters, 10 digits and, depending on the web site, as many as a couple of dozen special characters (some sites won't let you use certain characters). If you create a password with 6 digits, there are a million possibilities. If you use, however, six lower-case letters, the number jumps to over 300 million. And if you use a combination of upper- and lower-case letters, you get 2 billion different combinations. Add in special characters and the number of possibilities is in the hundreds of billions.

Combine this with tip #1 and use a longer password, and see these numbers expand faster than the universe during the Big Bang. If you only use letters and digits, an 8-character password can have as many as 200 trillion possibilities. Move to 12-character passwords and the number is so big I don't even know how to define it (it's 1023, plus a bit).

4. Passwords Are Personal

My favorite way to make a password incorporates all aspects of a safe password AND is easy to remember. Simply pick two of your favorite things, add a dash between them, and tack on your favorite number at the end. If you favorite food is pizza and you drive a 2003 Jeep, you could make your password "Pizza-Jeep03." You could use your pet's name, street you grew up on, favorite sports team, favorite TV show character, or anything else you can think of.

5. Change it Often

“Treat your password like your toothbrush,” said Clifford Stoll, U.S. Astronomer and author. “Don’t let anybody else use it, and get a new one every six months.” While funny, this still holds true today.