Greetings,

Today I thought I would take a few minutes and talk about passwords. Everyone has them and almost everyone dislikes them. I thought I would take a few minutes and give a couple of simple techniques to make your password much harder for someone else to guess and/or hack while at the same time keeping it easy to remember.

Everyone understands passwords are needed to keep hackers and other prying eyes out of accounts with sensitive information (bank records, medical accounts. etc). Most folks understand the need for a secure password for email and wireless accounts though some people do not care if everyone knows that password. To protect your family, friends, coworkers, etc you need to make all your passwords more secure. Why? If you dont, people you dont know can and will hack your account or access your network. They can then start using your email account or network address to start sending out virus infections, set your PC up to participate in attacks on other networks, or monitor your computer for sensitive information and send it off to have your identity stolen. If your bank password is complicated and secure but someone can easily access your wireless network it isnt very hard to install a small program that records keystrokes making life easy for a hacker or identity thief.

So what is a person to do to make passwords easy to remember but hard to hack?

1) Incorporate a number and/or capital letter and/or punctuation mark into your password. For example: "password" is simple to guess - YES you would be amazed at how often typing password for the password will get me into someone account. Instead use Password! (Capital P and add ! to the end)

2) Replace letters in your existing password with symbols. Try P@$$word instead of password. The brain works in strange ways and while you remember a simple word like "password" it is also very simple to remember the @ symbol replaces a and the $ replaces the s.

3) Replace letters in your existing password with numbers. The zero key is right next to the letter o. The 3 key is right next to the letter e. Even if someone is trying to watch you type your password they may not notice you typed passw0rd not password or 3agl3 instead of eagle.

Once this change has become habit you can still tape that password to your monitor or leave it under your keyboard spelled out in plain English but you will know the trick to decoding your own password and others will wonder why it doesnt work for them.

This technique can be used for all types of passwords. Email, bank accounts, wireless access codes, etc. Lastly remember A_Computer_Guy, a-computer-guy, and AComputerGuy are all completely different codes to a computer.

Have a nice day!

Doug

P.S. - Hate having to change your password every month or quarter? Is it really hard to decide on a new password? Try this. Just add the number equivalent of the current month or quarter to the end of your regular password. (ie: password02) Next month/quarter increment to password03. Most systems only remember the last 10 passwords so come next year you can still use the same password again. Incorporate this into the above techniques and you are all set with a simple way to secure your passwords yet easily come up with new ones!