On this day, May 2nd, we mark the ‘World Password Day’, an occasion that promotes cybersecurity and best practices when it comes to safeguarding our online accounts. The first line of defense in protecting ourselves from cybercriminals is through the use of strong passwords.
One common mistake people make is using the same password for multiple accounts, which can easily be cracked by hackers. According to a survey by Google, at least 65% of individuals use identical passwords across different sites. This makes it easy for hackers to access sensitive information linked to criminal activity, as reported in the ‘Verizon data leak investigations report’.
Veronica Pace, head of marketing at Trend Micro Italia, has shared her tips on how to create strong passwords that are difficult to guess:
1. Avoid using letters and numbers in sequence (e.g., qwerty, abcde, 12345, asdf) as they are too predictable and easy to guess.
2. Never use your date of birth as a password since it can be easily accessed by hackers.
3. Combine letters, numbers and symbols into a password that is at least eight characters long.
4. Do not use your own name as a password since it is easy to guess or find out online.
5. Avoid creating a password with personal information such as your address or phone number since it can be used against you if it falls into the wrong hands.
6. Stay away from using common words or phrases as passwords since they can be quickly guessed by hackers using brute force attacks or dictionary attacks.
7. Stop reusing passwords for each account created since doing so increases the risk of getting compromised by hackers who have gained access to one account only to move laterally within other accounts linked with that same login credentials.
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