In yesterday’s article, I discussed hackers and what you can do to protect yourself from their dastardly deeds. One of the most powerful and important ways to protect your computer and other devices from problems is having strong online passwords.

Passwords

Here is my password policy. If a website does not need serious security, then I use a typical, quick password. But, a website like a banking site does need good security. On those websites, I have my password manager (LastPass) generate a high-quality password of at least 12 characters. Almost any password manager will generate secure passwords for you. Here is what that looks like in LastPass.

When you select “Generate Secure Password”, the App presents a window like this.

You can modify password length and several other parameters. When you are finished, the password is inserted into your location and saved to the password program. You do not have to remember a complicated password, the App does that for you.

So, why all the concern about passwords? Take a look at this chart of password strength versus time for a hacker to break the password.

Take a good look at this chart. The longer the password with more variables is the way to go. This is a little scary, but very informative, is it not?

Conclusion

I highly recommend allowing your password program to generate long and complicated passwords for websites that need added security. You could do that for every website account, I suppose, but it might be overkill.