I’ve come across an alarming number of people in my travels who have no password at all on their computers or have very easy to guess passwords.

People tell me that they don’t care if someone gets into their computer and they don’t have anything to hide or anything worth stealing but they still call me when all of their data goes missing or someone hacks their wifi connection or emails.

Think your password system is pretty secure.  Read this article (How I’d hack your weak passwords) and let me know how well your password would hold up.

A case for decent passwords:

1.  Your data is your data.  If it isn’t well protected you could loose it forever or have it stolen and used for malicious purposes like identity theft etc.   How much would your family photos on your computer be worth to someone else?  How much would they be worth to get them back if you lost them?

2.  Computers are always getting faster, tools are always getting more complex and hackers are always getting more ingenious.  The amount of time required for a decently spec’d computer to crack password with brute force is going down by the day.  And the tools for password recover, network sniffers, trojans etc are getting more ellaborate by the day.

3. If nothing else, there is hassle involved when someone else gains your password.  At the very least there is the hassle to change your password and remember a new one.  At worst, there is time and money spent on repairing the operating system on your computer, rebuilding your online identity and recovering your files.

How to make your passwords stronger

1.  Don’t use real words, names or birthdays.

2.  Use a combination of lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers and symbols.  The more the merrier and the longer the merrier.  Many corporate organisations enforce a policy of have at least 3 of the 4 groups mentioned here and a minimum of 7 characters.

3. Try a song that you know well and use the first letter of each word as your password – “Somewhere over the rainbow, way up high” becomes sotrwuh.  Then mix this up with some capital letters or numbers (don’t just capitalise the first letter add 1 to the end).

4.  If you touch-type, try shifting your fingers one space to the left or right. This makes otherwise easy passwords harder to guess.  password becomes [sddeptf for example.

Some suggestions for managing passwords

1.  Get some software to help you remember.  I recommend Keypass (http://keepass.info/) for your system passwords and LastPass (http://lastpass.com/) which specialises in Internet passwords and logins.   Using these you can set strong different passwords for different systems, applications and internet sites and you only have to remember one password for your Keepass and/or Lastpass software.

2.  Change your passwords regularly.  I know this makes them harder to remember but it is a great security measure.  If someone spends a month cracking your password but you changed it a week ago, it isn’t going to help them much.

3.  Use different passwords for different systems.  Some systems are more secure than others and yet people generally use the same password for everything.  If someone gets your password form an insecure site on the net that you signed up to a newsletter on or something, can they then use the same password for accessing your email and bank account details?