Password health refers to the overall strength and security of your passwords. Good password health means that your passwords are strong, unique and hard to guess, reducing the risk of unauthorised access to your accounts. We have summarised how to improve your password health below.
Don’t re-use passwords
Using the same password across multiple accounts is risky because if one account is compromised, an attacker could gain access to all of your accounts that use the same password. Online services and websites can and do suffer data breaches, where user account information, including passwords, are leaked. If you frequently re-use passwords, the leaked password may be used to access your other accounts.
Use a good length
As a minimum, we recommend a password should be at least 18 characters long, although this number increases each year as the capacity for hackers to crack passwords also increases.
Be uncommon
There is a growing list of passwords online that have been extracted from data breaches through various sources. The web service Have I Been Pwnd provides the option where you can search previous exposed passwords to see if your password is on the list of previously stolen data.
Three random words
The NCSC recommend using three random words to ensure your password is long, unique, but still easy to remember. This is great advice for a time when we have numerous online accounts and passwords.
Use a password manager
Even better than three random words would be a long password that is a mixture of lower case, upper case, numbers and special characters that is randomly generated (not by a human). The case for password managers is strong and we would, where possible, recommend using a password manager – see our post Password managers – are they safe?
How we can help
If you would like to discuss your password health or the wider issues around cyber security, please get in touch with us today.