The best way to Create a Safe Password: 7 Greatest Practices for 2024

As we reside in an more and more on-line world, having safe passwords for our on-line accounts has by no means been extra vital. Simply in July 2024, practically 10 billion passwords have been leaked in an enormous knowledge breach involving the defunct social website RockYou. With cyberattacks taking place yearly, ensuring you will have robust and safe passwords is likely one of the greatest methods to guard your on-line knowledge.

However what precisely constitutes a safe password? How do you make sure that your password is safe? Are there particular password greatest practices we have to observe?

On this article, we provide you with a step-by-step information on tips on how to create a safe password and a few password suggestions and suggestions you possibly can undertake to guard you and your on-line accounts.

How safe is my password?

Maybe the primary query in your thoughts is determining how safe your present passwords are. Fortunately, there are a handful of greatest practices that work as efficient pointers for figuring out whether or not a password is safe. On this case, since I don’t know your particular password, I’ll use a standard instance to showcase the method of grading the power of a password.

SEE: How an 8-Character Password May very well be Cracked in Only a Few Minutes (TechRepublic)

In 2023, Statista discovered that “123456” was probably the most generally used password on this planet — getting used over 4.5 million occasions. With this password, let’s have a look to see if it passes among the important inquiries to ask when evaluating a password:

• Is your password a minimum of 12-16 characters lengthy?
• Does it use a mixture of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols?
• Can your password be recognized by different folks and never simply you?
• Are you reusing this password to your different accounts?

Clearly, 123456 fails to satisfy most, if not all, of the questions posed above. It’s solely six characters lengthy; it doesn’t have any combos of numbers, symbols, or letters; and it’s an extremely widespread password, getting used greater than 4.5 million occasions around the globe.

Whereas the following tips aren’t the end-all and be-all of password greatest practices, they’re good beginning factors for figuring out whether or not your passwords are safe or not.

Earlier than going additional, I need to make an vital observe. Should you’re utilizing a password that’s generally utilized by different customers, similar to 123456, I extremely advocate studying by the remainder of our article and creating a brand new one. With widespread passwords, there’s a excessive probability {that a} brute pressure assault can simply crack your passwords.

With this in thoughts, listed here are different widespread passwords utilized in 2023, in keeping with the identical Statista report:

• admin
• 12345678
• 123456789
• 1234
• 12345
• Password
• 123

The best way to create a safe password?

Now that we’ve discovered tips on how to fee a password’s general safety, it’s time to take steps to create our personal safe password.

1. Ensure you aren’t recycling previous passwords

My first tip is so that you can forgo utilizing any of your previous passwords or remodifying your earlier passwords into new ones. I extremely advocate making a singular password for every of your accounts or units.

This safeguards your accounts from being compromised, particularly if a hacker will get a maintain of certainly one of your passwords and tries to apply it to your different on-line accounts. If this occurs however you adopted this tip, the hacker received’t be capable to infiltrate extra of your private info.

2. Write a password that’s a minimum of 12-16 characters lengthy

Your new password ought to a minimum of have 12 characters to make sure safety. Having this variety of characters makes a password tougher to crack, particularly in opposition to brute pressure or dictionary assaults.

Whereas 12 characters is mostly the really useful minimal, I don’t suppose there’s any hurt in going for 14 and even 16. On this case, the bottom line is having a minimum of 12 in all of the passwords that you simply use on a frequent foundation.

3. Mix uppercase and lowercase numbers, letters, and symbols

One other vital password apply is to make use of a mix of uppercase and lowercase numbers, letters, and symbols in your password. As with my earlier suggestion, this makes it harder for malicious actors to try to crack your password by trial and error.

Should you’re unfamiliar with how these seem like, I’ve added a number of samples beneath:

• afg-jdf!dkx5jaw-VNA
• zga-PFM*tjh7qaj!qjezga-PFM*tjh7qaj!qje
• rpg@pqw9cey2ekh6JXZ

Whereas these examples look sophisticated, they’re a major step-up by way of safety in comparison with passwords like qwerty or 123456. Having a mixture of these characters additionally helps push back dictionary assaults, whereby a hacker systematically goes by phrases in a dictionary or phrase database to seek out your password.

As well as, safety instruments like password managers have built-in password turbines that robotically create, save, and retailer these passwords to your comfort.

4. Don’t embrace any private identifiable info in your passwords

I strongly encourage everybody to by no means embrace any private identifiable info or biographical knowledge in your passwords. What do I imply by this? Issues like your birthday or delivery 12 months, dwelling deal with, age, or household identify shouldn’t be a part of your passwords.

Whereas these might allow you to bear in mind your credentials, it’s merely not value taking the chance.  Skilled hackers will greater than possible use no matter PII you will have obtainable within the public, significantly on social media, as a part of their hacking methods.

Let’s say, for instance, you will have your birthday as your checking account password. If I used to be a hacker, one of many first issues I’d examine is that if your birthday is publicly displayed on a social media website. Whether it is, and I acquire entry to half your financial institution particulars, your birthday will likely be one of many very first issues I’ll strive.

As soon as once more, this example may be simply prevented by not having any PII or private knowledge in any of your passwords or logins.

5. Think about using a passphrase

For customers who need a substitute for utilizing jumbled textual content or for those that aren’t eager on adopting password supervisor software program, I recommend wanting into passphrases. Passphrases are a string of random phrases — typically with symbols and characters as nicely — that function a password.

Utilizing teams of unrelated phrases to your passwords is usually a good solution to preserve your on-line accounts safe. Since they’re phrases, additionally they have the additional benefit of being longer than your conventional password.

For these interested by how a passphrase may seem like, I’ve added a number of examples beneath:

• illusive-sateen-upset-tiresome
• Loaf6-behold3-uglify2-bureau5
• 9betaken-essex8-piano6-lengtheN2

Should you’re inquisitive about studying extra, we now have an in-depth function on passphrases that takes a have a look at the benefits and downsides of passphrases, in addition to how greatest to make the most of them.

6. By no means share your passwords with anybody

This may appear apparent, but it surely bears emphasizing — I strongly advocate that you simply by no means share your passwords with anybody, below any circumstances. At all times preserve your passwords to your self and by no means reveal them to others, particularly by way of unprotected channels like SMS, e-mail, or on-line messaging platforms.

For one, you actually can’t inform who you possibly can belief in relation to sharing passwords. Second, in the event you share passwords by channels like social media, there’s probability that these conversations will likely be hacked or breached.

7. Use a password supervisor

Lastly, I extremely encourage customers and companies to make the most of a password supervisor or password administration service. Password managers are software program that’s purpose-built to retailer, arrange, and safe your passwords. It accomplishes this through the use of safety measures like encryption, zero-knowledge ideas, and multi-factor authentication.

Personally, I discover password managers with password turbines to be their most helpful function. Most password managers embrace them. These turbines are a safety device that robotically implements password greatest practices and creates a safe password in a matter of seconds.

With password turbines, you possibly can customise how lengthy you need your passwords to be, what characters you need included, or if you’d like a passphrase as a substitute.

SEE: How Do Password Managers Work and Why Do You Want One? (TechRepublic)

For companies, password managers are additionally an ideal solution to handle a whole lot to hundreds of log-in credentials with out compromising safety.

If you wish to study extra about password managers, try our complete cheat sheet and this record of free choices.

Greatest password managers to select from

Fortuitously, I’ve lined numerous password managers that may allow you to create safe passwords for you and your online business. As a disclaimer, all those listed beneath embrace a password generator, vault encryption, and limitless password storage with each subscription.

Bitwarden

For customers who need an open-source password supervisor, I recommend Bitwarden. Bitwarden has garnered a powerful repute for its top-tier safety by its end-to-end encrypted service. It comes with superior two-factor authentication, password safety well being experiences, and passkey capabilities.

SEE: The best way to Run a Cybersecurity Threat Evaluation in 5 Steps (TechRepublic Premium)

I significantly like its beneficiant free model, permitting for each limitless password storage and limitless machine assist. That is significantly spectacular contemplating most free password managers both implement a password or machine restrict.

To study extra, learn our full Bitwarden overview.

Keeper

For enterprise-level password administration, I like to recommend Keeper. Its enterprise subscription brings a formidable suite of administration options similar to exercise reporting, single sign-on authentication, delegated administration, and Energetic Listing Sync.

All through its different enterprise subscriptions, a spotlight function for me is Keeper’s emphasis on password group. Particularly, I recognize Keeper’s emphasis on its folders, subfolders, and shared group folder capabilities. In a enterprise context, having the ability to share passwords throughout groups and departments is an underrated value-add.

To study extra, learn our full Keeper overview.

NordPass

For much less tech-savvy customers wanting into password administration, go for NordPass. To me, NordPass has one of many cleanest and most intuitive interfaces within the password supervisor house — making it decide for inexperienced persons or common customers. On prime of that, it features a bevy of safety features like a knowledge breach scanner, biometric unlocking, and autosave/autofill capabilities.

A noteworthy NordPass function for me is its use of the newer XChaCha20 encryption over the extra conventional AES-256. In line with NordPass, this was achieved to future-proof their service and reap XChaCha20’s pace advantages.