We all use passwords. All of us. Depending on how long you’ve been apart of a particular service, you may not realize it, but your password may be pretty old. The one thing that is protecting you from outsiders is something that needs to be maintained.
Technology updates
The technology from the 1990s (as an example) is practically archaic compared to what we have today. Back then, having your password be “Password” may have worked. Nowadays, though, that will just not cut it. There are several different things that you need to be able to do to make sure that the service is secure. I’ve talked about secure Passwords and utilizing 2FA over the past couple of weeks, but if you have a week password, then it won’t matter. You need to be able to update and change your passwords if they feel out of date to you.
Methods update
When you first set your password for your service, they may have had a particular set of protocols for how they want any passwords you use to be set up. Things like a certain number of characters, one capital letter etc. are relatively standard for passwords today. It’s also entirely possible that the service would update what they want to have for passwords that you use. In this case, they may contact you and say something like, “Hey, we’ve changed our policies, and so you need to update your password.” I got one of these types of e-mails a few weeks ago in regards to a digital mailbox (not to be confused with e-mail) service that I use.
What most corporations do
Because of how many attacks can happen, some companies change their passwords regularly. I have worked for two different companies that require their users to change their passwords every 90 days. Depending on how strict your company’s password policy is, you could be changing your password once a month! I used to work for a company that not only required us to change our passwords every 90 days, but it also made sure that we couldn’t use the previous eight passwords. It got to the point that I had worked there for four or five years, and I never had the same password twice.
Set it and forget it isn’t really an option anymore
For those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, you will be well aware that I love the use of password keepers. It makes it so that you don’t have to remember every single password that you have out there. Let’s be honest; there are WAY too many to be able to remember. Here’s the thing, just because you don’t have to remember your passwords on a day to day basis, that doesn’t mean that you need to forget them forever.
Using the same password over and over and over and over again
This is something that I have done. You think up a password that you think is super complex. It has numbers, special characters and letters, both upper and lower case. That’s great; we all know I love strong passwords. The problem is that you use that one password EVERYWHERE. I have, on a couple of occasions, realized that I’d been using the same password over and over again. This is the kind of thing that hackers love simply because if you use one password everywhere, that’s half the work for them. All they need to do is figure out one password, and they can then access your whole digital life. There are a couple of different things that you can do to avoid this. Firstly you can have completely different passwords for each service you use. If you’re going to do that, reliance on a password keeper will become more and more important. The other thing that you can do is select four or five passwords and vary how you write those passwords. Using different numbers and special Characters, and having those things in different spots in the password is a great way to confuse any potential infiltrator.
I want to be clear; I’m not asking that you updated all of your passwords every 90 days, nor am I suggesting that you go and change every password you have now. That would be wildly impractical. The more services you have, the more impractical that becomes. What I would advise is that if you can look at one of your passwords and think that it is A) not strong enough, B) really old, or C) used in a bunch of different places, go and change it. The secret sauce about passwords is that you, as a valid user of the system, can change your password whenever you like. You are in the driver’s seat. You have control. My advice to you would be to take a hard look at any passwords you have, and if they aren’t good enough, go and change them and make your system more secure.
Do you think you’re passwords are secure enough?
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