Il World Password Day falls every first Thursday in May and aims to disseminate useful advice and best practices to protect the IT security of the user. Passwords play a key role in defense from external attacks. And, unfortunately, they are almost never safe enough.
According to several industry experts, over 80% of data leaks depends on a password being compromised. In parallel over 60% of users use the same keywords to log in to different services and accounts. Significantly increasing the risk of breach.
In other words, that would be enough set up a strong password to drastically reduce the possibility of suffering unwanted interference by hacker o ill-intentioned.
Luckily it’s not difficult at all set a secure alphanumeric combination. Just follow some useful tipslike those proposed by Trend Micro.
Mistakes to avoid to improve password security
The first thing to do to improve the security of your password is abandon sequences of letters or numbers. Starting from the famous “123456“, until reaching “qwerty” o “abcde”. These are the most common passwords of all and are among the easiest to crack.
After that it absolutely is It is not advisable to enter your date of birth: information that is usually favored for the ease with which it is memorized. But what can be easily discovered by an attacker.
At the same time we should avoid using as password the own name or that of a loved one: another practice that is much more widespread than one might imagine, which, fortunately, is starting to appear automatically blocked by sites and services more advanced.
Finally, you shouldn’t use passwords never refer to content directly related to personal or professional life: for example your home address, rather than your work address. Even in this case it is in fact about bad habits to leave behind, since the information in question is very easy to find.
Tips to follow to create a secure password
After reviewing some of the most common errors of users, it is possible to go into detail about the useful tips for creating one secure password. Starting with some basic rules.
A passwordto be retained complexmust be composed of one sequence of letters, numbers and special characters. Furthermore, some sites impose a minimum or maximum number of characters to take into consideration.
When approaching creating a strong password it would be useful avoid using meaningless words. It is also important to use numbers and special characters appropriately.
In this sense it is always good don’t give in to temptation to use the numbers oh special characters as letter substitutes: for example the number “0“in place of the letter”o“, or the character “@“in place of the letter”a”.
To have an idea of the level password complexity proposal, it is possible to use the rating provided by several websites. Alternatively, you can use an ad hoc tool, such as a password generator o one password manager.
To know more: Computer security: guide to safe browsing on the web