Creating and using good passwords is the digital equivalent of flossing our teeth. We all know we should do it, but it’s time consuming and not easy to do. The good news is that it’s possible to create strong, but easy to remember passwords.

So, which of the following two passwords is stronger and more difficult to crack? Which is more difficult to Remember?

B!g1——————–
TisHw4k.%sQxWE,rUbnD<Ww

Believe it or not, the first password is both stronger, and for most people easier to remember.  It’s hard to see, but the first password is one character longer than the second, and because of the way hackers try to crack passwords, it is more secure than the second. The first tool that hackers use when trying to guess passwords is a dictionary attack. Because neither password is in a dictionary, that attack will fail. At that point a hacker will fall back to a brute force attack, where password length and character mix is important for making a password hard to crack.

So how should you choose your password?

1. Use a memorable word or phrase that has upper case, lower case, number(s), and symbol(s) in it.
2. Pad that with a character to make the password and then pad it with a random character so that the password length is about 25 characters long.
3. Another example of a strong password is: D0gsD!g………………..