Just a quick note about passwords. Over the few years I’ve been administering the network here at First Baptist, I’ve come across some really great and really not so great passwords. I thought it was about time I addressed this. There are a few ways to create a really secure password, that is also very memorable, if you are willing to take just a few moments to think about it. Here are a few tips and examples:

1) Passwords shouldn’t be words in the dictionary.
The easiest thing for hackers to do is what’s called a brute force attack, wherein they have software that literally tries every word in the dictionary.

2) You should have different passwords for every application.
Your banking password should be different from your email password, etc… If someone gained access to your personal email and saw you bank at BankX, they now have two very critical pieces of information that could’ve been prevented by having two separate passwords.

3) Don’t use Dates, Names, etc…
At least not on their own. A combination of those can make a good password.

4) Change your passwords periodically.
The longer you use a password the more likely it will be hacked. Change them at least twice a year.

Good Password Examples:
Acronyms make great passwords that are very difficult to break. For example: “I Love To Drink Coffee At The Airport” could be Il2dc@ta. That’s Capital ” I “, lowercase ” L “. That’s an easy to remember sentence and a password that no one will guess. It’s 8 characters, has a capital letter, a special character, and a number; which will satisfy the most demanding password requirements.

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Marc Boroditsky, a computer security expert and chief executive officer of Passlogix, says, an eBay password might be ebnpr2007 — eb for eBay, npr for a familiar acronym and 2007 for the year. “So, ebnpr2007 isn’t a word in the dictionary and isn’t easy to guess if you were attempting to gain access,” he says.