How to make a strong password?

Passwords are our first line of defense against hackers. We can think of passwords as the front door for any hacker to get through. That’s why it’s better to be proactive on our end to improve our defenses against hackers.

In celebration of World Password Day, here are 5 tips on creating strong passwords.

Tip #1 Make it complicated.

It sounds a bit stressful to create a complex password and remember it. Trust us and all the other cybersecurity experts on this one.

Hackers can carry on brute force attacks. It can be as simple as manually guessing which words you’ve most likely used, or utilizing applications and scripts (specifically brute force tools). That’s why a complex password is great for your security.

How do we create a complex password? When you’re creating a password, it can be as simple as making it longer than the required minimum amount of characters. The longer it is, the harder it is to crack.

Tip #2 Be creative!

Aside from making it longer than the required minimum amount of characters you can utilize different combinations of letters, numbers, and symbols.

Keep in mind that you’re allowed to use alphanumeric character combinations. You can even use square brackets “[ ]”, curly brackets “{ }”, and round brackets “( )”.

Tip #3 Use misspelled words.

Hackers can also carry on a dictionary attack. Make your password strong by misspelling commonly used words.

Example:
ilovemydogs — ilovemydogesss — ayelovemoidogesss

Tip #4 Learn from the mistakes of others.

Be aware of the most common passwords, and avoid using any of those as your password. Find out more about the common passwords here.

Tip #5 Never use personal information.

Ever thought of using a birthday or an anniversary date as your password?

It may be easy to remember personal information. However, we should avoid using these as our passwords. Since almost everyone has a social media account, it would be best not to use easily accessible information about yourself such as your birthday, anniversary, alma matter, favorite things, and the like.

Creating strong passwords or updating passwords is a great step for all users. This is why we always remind our users to make it a habit.

In MYCURE, we remind our users to do such steps, but we don’t leave them on their own devices. We actively build better security measures for our users every single day. That’s how we became HIPAA compliant. Learn more about what HIPAA compliance is, and how we made sure to be compliant with this act.