How to pick a secure password

Put down any sharp objects and stop operating heavy machinery. Today, I’m here to talk to you about passwords!

Yes, they’re the bane of existence for those of us that use any online service. But they’re a necessary evil too - without them, our emails would be filled with offers from Nigerian Princes and our online banking accounts would be emptier than a wine glass at 5pm on a Friday.

Passwords truly protect us against ‘the scum of the universe’ so today I’m going to help you create one that is more secure, and most importantly, easier to remember.

Traditional advice would suggest that your password should have 12 characters and include numbers, capital letters and lower case letters. This advice is still used by almost all online service providers and there is a simple method to picking and remembering a password that satisfies these conditions.

Creating a Passphrase

A Passphrase is a selection of four random words that don’t make sense together and aren’t in grammatically correct order.

Some examples

An example of a bad passphrase is ‘CatInTheHat’. It’s a well-known phrase and the words make sense together. ‘MyBeautifulRedHouse’ is another bad example because it’s grammatically correct.

An better example would be ‘SmashingPurpleOxfordNotebook’ as the words don’t make sense together, they aren’t in grammatically correct order and it’s not a well-known phrase of any kind.

It can be strangely difficult to think of four actually random words so a quick Google search for ‘random word generator’ should help you in your quest.

Pro tip: To add to the randomness, roll a die/dice four times. The four numbers you roll should relate to the amount of characters needed for each random word.

To fulfil the traditional advice for selecting a secure password, all that’s left to do is to add a number to your passphrase. We would suggest adding it to the end.

Even more security

To continue making your password more secure just keep adding numbers, letters or special characters using the same, random method.

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James is an IT professional and Director of local computer support company JMV Solutions.

With 50+ years of combined experience, James and his team of ‘IT Heroes’ at JMV Solutions are your local IT heroes based in Heathfield, Newton Abbot. They serve the surrounding areas of Ashburton, Bovey Tracey and Chudleigh with industry leading solutions to their home and office IT problems.

For more information go to www.jmv-solutions.co.uk or give one of the friendly team a call on 01626 821160

Other columns by James Vincent