Passwords Why all the bother?

Why passwords? They protect: Theft Examples: Money Information Identity Theft Examples: Credit Card Sprint Tax Returns Genealogy

Making Strong Passwords Length Minimum: 9 characters Strong: 12 characters Very Strong: 14 characters Mixture of: Lowercase letters (a-z) Uppercase letters (A-Z) Numbers (0-9) Symbols (~`!@#$%^&*()-_=+[]{}\|;:’”<>,.?/)

Making Strong Passwords

Password Don’ts Don’t use personal information Don’t use repeating characters Don’t use dictionary words, even with replacements “elephants” or “313ph4nt$” Don’t reuse passwords…

Password Reuse In general, it is a bad idea Exception: If one website gets hacked, then they have access to all other websites using that same password Exception: Username & password combo is unique Non-sensitive accounts Account Grouping

How to create good passwords? Phrase “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union” “WtpofUSiOtfampU” “Wtp0fU$-101f4mpU” “High on the mountain top, A banner is unfurled” “Hotmt-4biu”

How to create good passwords? Combine several unrelated words together (xkcd.com):

Password Storage Not good, but very common: Problems: Post-it note on monitor Password cheat sheet Under the keyboard Browser password saving Problems: Number of accounts keeps growing Needs to be available at home and elsewhere Needs to be secure

Password Storage

Password Storage Smartphone password managers Password protected file LastPass Dashlane Password protected file Contains website addresses, usernames, passwords, etc Evernote, MS OneNote, MS Word Password shorthand Instead of “correcthorsebatterystaple”  “chbs”