How to Make a Strong Password

Whether for work or home, there is more and more pressure to use strong passwords. There are ways to do this while still making the passwords easy for you to remember.

If you don't already know, passwords are rated by their complexity. More complex passwords are considered stronger passwords because they would be more difficult to crack or to guess.

What makes a password strong? Today's standard for a strong password is one that has at least eight (8) characters that are a mix of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. But, how easy is it to remember a password like "*77hTrP$"? With some time, sure I could remember that. But it would be so much better if I could come up with a strong password that was also easy to remember.

Here are some tips to help.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• While not necessary, a good grasp of alpha-numeric pager code would help. Whoa! Remember pagers? I just felt my age. :^)

1. Don't think about the length of your password, yet. Just think of a word or two that are easy for you to remember. Write the word(s) down so that you can begin turning it into a strong password.

2. Mix in numbers. Look at what you wrote down and switch letters with numbers that resemble them (as was done in pager code many years ago). For example, use a "7" in place of a "T"... or an "8" in place of a "B"... or a "12" in place of an "R"... and so on.

3. Mix in special characters. Look at the remaining letters that you wrote down and determine what letters could be switched with special characters that resemble them. For example, an "!" could replace an "L" or an "I"... an "*" could replace an "O"... an @ could replace an "A"... and so on.

4. Mix up the cases of the remaining letters. Make some uppercase and some lowercase.

5. Now, step back and take a look at your password. Can you still recognize it? Are there eight (8) characters or more in it? If you answered "Yes" to these questions, then you've got a strong password that should be fairly easy for you to remember.

Tips & Warnings

• If your memory is better than mine is, then you could also take advantage of random password generators that are free to use on the Internet.

[christamiller]

on 9/28/2009 Awesome article. If only people would just remember all their dang passwords!