Creating a Strong Password

A strong password can help protect you and your data from unwanted access. A strong password should be long, complex, and easy to remember (so you don’t have to write it down). Modern attacks can get past a week password within a matter of moment.

Never use the same password for multiple accounts. The majority of compromised accounts are compromised elsewhere. For example, your password for your email is the same as your online banking. If your email account password is compromised, so is your online banking.

The longer your password the better. The average password is 9 characters long. Passwords under 10 characters are very weak regardless of complexity. For example:

  • A password of thursday1 will take the average computer roughly 8 minutes to crack.
  • Adding complexity doesn’t change much either. Lets use the same password but change the first two characters to an Uppercase T and replace the s with a 5. The password of Thur5day1 will now take an average computer 26 minutes to crack.

To make a strong password that is long, complex, and easy to remember, you should follow these easy steps:

  • Use multiple full length words or create a sentence
  • Separate all or some of the words by special characters.
  • Include uppercase, lowercase, and numbers.

An example of a strong password:

  • A password like, Sh0rt-&-Sweet, is 13 characters long, contains uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and special characters, and would take an average computer 3 years to crack.
  • Using this format it becomes very easy to reach 20 or more characters in your password. For Example, T3xt-Books-R-Very-Heavy, this password is 23 characters long and will take the average computer 1,000,000 years to crack.

To change your password to a more secure password please visit our Password Help page to change your password.

For more information about creating a strong password visit the Get Cyber Safe Using Passwords website.

Having a strong password is no good if you give it away. Check out our page on Phishing to prevent you from falling victim to a Phishing scam.