Who loves Passwords? Passwords are incredibly frustrating, a necessary evil as many would say. Unfortunately, they won’t be disappearing anytime soon and although you probably don’t appreciate having to remember them the password is your digital guardian and it’s important you ensure you’re creating super secure passwords that give hackers a hard time. But why does this matter?

Take a moment and think about the personal information you provide online every day.

• Your credit card number when you shop online.
• Your bank account PIN when you check on your savings account.
• Your social media passwords - allowing a potential hacker into your digital identity and potentially access your company social media profiles and have access directly to customers who communicate with you through social media.
• Pictures of your family, friends and colleagues on your Facebook page.

In 2015 we work, play and network in a digital world, and with more people using digital mediums to share and communicate both in and outside of work it is expected we’ll send and keep sensitive info online. That’s why strong passwords are important for all your online accounts and personal/business information. The Password is the gatekeeper who protects you against online hackers, phishing scams, spam and other hazards that prey on unsuspecting victims throughout the Internet.

The Guardian reported that Defending Britain against cyber-attacks and repairing the damage done by hackers who penetrate security systems costs businesses £34bn a year. Just imagine the cost of a serious security breach on your business? Sadly, there isn’t a single industry who doesn’t suffer from data security breaches due to weak passwords. Are you next? You could be. Without even knowing, you could be the victim of a security breach and from there your personal/business information and potentially your customer information could be spread around the internet and into the dark web where people are willing to pay hundreds of thousands of pounds to get hold of sensitive information that can be used for blackmail, fraud and identity theft. All because your digital security wasn’t strong enough.

Reflect back on the last year, and think about how media outlets have spread the news about security breaches made to businesses like American retail giant, Home Depot who had 56 Million credit & debit card details leaked and 53 million email addresses shared on the web. Sony Pictures who suffered a leak of 47,000 Social Security Numbers which hackers then used to find thousands of Sony Employees’ names, addresses and date of birth - increasing the chances of Identity Fraud. More recently Ashley Madison infamous for allowing married couples to ‘explore’ affairs had 25 gigabytes of company data leaked, including the personal information of many of its users - information that users of this service believed to be anonymous.

Digital Security fortunately, is evolving and while it’s incredibly important to ensure you maintain a super secure password with symbols, numbers and uppercase/lowercase technology giants like Apple & Microsoft are ramping up security and integrating biometric technology into many of their products. Biometric security has become incredibly common in the last 3 years - since the introduction of Touch ID in 2013 by Apple companies have scrambled to meet the demand for biometric technology - Google recently announced native Support for Fingerprint scanners in Android Marshmallow, Microsoft introduced Windows Hello to Windows 10 allowing users to unlock phones, tablets and laptops/desktop with fingerprints, face and eyes and Apple continue to work on Touch ID with the recent introduction of Touch ID 2.0 featured in the fleet of iPhones and iPads.

But ultimately what does this mean?

This means companies are beginning to recognise and address business and consumer security fears. We are securer than ever, to get into an iPhone with Touch ID activated a hacker would need to ‘hack’ off your finger, to get into Windows 10 Machine with Windows Hello activated a hacker would need to replicate your facial features or your retinas - there are more hoops hackers need to jump through nowadays but all lead back to the ye olde faithful password but how can you create an ‘unbreakable’ password:

The longer the password, the harder it is to crack. Consider a 12-character password or longer.

Things to avoid: Names, places, dictionary words.

Mix it up. Use variations on capitalization, spelling, numbers, and punctuation.

How secure is my Password? Find out: How secure is my password.

How can hackers break your password?

How do hackers go about their business? How can somebody you’ve never met guess one of your most precious secrets? Here are a few examples:

Brute Force attack - Ultimately, no matter how secure your password is somebody, somewhere will be able to crack it. Given enough time and computing cycles, hackers can work through enough different combinations of characters to find your password. The trick is to make it as difficult as possible. The longer and more random your password, the better.

Personal attacks - Hackers can try personal information such as your name, family member’s name, or pet’s name or your phone number or address.

Insider attacks - Someone at work, maybe a co-worker, a visitor, or cleaning staff, can see it attached to your monitor or next to your keyboard on a post-it note or notepad.

You give it to someone - Once you give it away, you don’t know what they’ll do. They may write it down next to their monitor.

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