KI 2243 How to choose a good password?
· If possible, don’t choose the password yourself. Have a password manager choose the password (and remember it for you).
- Any reputable password manager will do a better job of creating and using passwords than a normal human being! KeePass is available in the Windows Software Centre on your UiB computer.
If you need to choose and remember your own password, here are some ways you can make it stronger:
· Broadly, longer is stronger. Aim for at least 16 characters. But repeating the same word a few times doesn't make for a good password.
· If you can’t use a password manager and so need to remember it yourself, think about using a sentence rather than a word.
· Avoid common words or phrases. Try not to use a common sentence like the national anthem or your football club’s song.
· Avoid the names of sports clubs, your faculty, months and seasons etc.
· Avoid publicly available information like your name, birthday, kids or pets names etc.
· Make sure that the password contains characters from different classes like UPPER case, numbers, special characters.
· Substitute the usual characters for others in a way that only you know (not just ‘3’ for ‘e’ etc)
· Use a character that isn’t space instead of the spaces between words (e.g. just using a ‘T’ character instead of the space will make it unlikely that your password will be cracked)
· Use unique passwords for each system
· But we’re human, so realistically, a unique password for each important system.