Dwight Watt - Newspaper Article #163 8/22/2012


Question: What are secure passwords?

Answer:

Secure passwords are passwords that cannot be easily guessed by computer programs that try to figure them out so people can get in your accounts. Secure passwords do not have to be impossible to remember.

Secure passwords normally meet at least three of the following requirement and ate not words in the dictionary, They may contain upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters. Many places put those requirements on you in creating a password. They usually require them to be either at least 6 or 8 characters long. The longer the password the harder for programs to guess it.

Computer generated secure passwords look like @23a8kb6 which makes no sense to us and the only way to remember is to write it down. If you write down passwords don’t write down the user name and account with it but put something else as indicator to you what it is for so if found no one knows what account it is to.

You can create secure passwords you can remember. For instance we could use the word washington as the basis for creating a secure password but change it so it is secure. I could change the a to @ and make the h a H and the i a number 1. Now it would be w@sH1ngton. It looks like the computer generated one to someone seeing you type it, but you can remember it.

Although passwords are the main way we secure accounts now, that is starting to change. We are beginning to see use of biometrics to make accounts and computers more secure that will do ways like checking your finger print or scanning your eye (which is supposed to be more unique than finger print) or facial recognition.