RGB’s Best Practices for Password Security
After opening our World Password Day Presents, enjoying a comforting Password Day meal, and singing the traditional World Password Day songs we settled down to shift our focus on the true meaning of World Password Day: Sharing the importance of secure passwords with our nearest and dearest. And for the RGB Team our nearest and dearest are you, our clients.
How important is a strong password really?
Many people using weak passwords are not aware of the technology in use today by hackers who can brute-force guess weak passwords in a matter of hours. A high-end 25-GPU cluster is capable of 350 billion guesses per second!
RGB’s Top 3 Best Practices for Password Security
1. Strong Passwords should be:
- at least 8 characters long
- difficult to guess
- devoid of personal information such as name, location, pet’s names
- a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, using numbers and symbols (do not list numbers sequentially)
2. Create Different Passwords for each account
- Using the same password for each of your accounts is tantamount to handing the keys to your entire life (financial, private, professional) to one lucky hacker
- Avoid patterns in your different passwords (for example: bob123email and bob123bank)
3. Invest in a Password Manager
- A password manager will be able to create secure and unique passwords
- You will only need to remember one password
- LastPass and Dashlane are well-reviewed password managers
Password Pro-tip: Using Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) provides an additional layer of security. If you try to login from a new location MFA will require a second step such as text message, fingerprint id, or even face recognition to insure that only you are using your password.