Checklist for choosing a strong password

This checklist will help you choose a strong password both at work and at home.

1. This checklist will help you choose a strong password both at work and at home.
2. Ensure it isn’t in the previous top 10 list of most commonly used passwords.
3. Ensure it isn’t a dictionary word or a number of dictionary words concatenated together.
4. Ensure it isn’t a person’s name, brand name, place name, the name of your football team and so on.
5. Ensure you haven’t used obvious character/numeric substitution. For example 3nglish, Rubb1sh and so on. There was a time when this was regarded as a secure password, but not any more. As hackers have learnt end-users tricks, they have added the words to their password cracking dictionaries.
6. Don’t use simple sequences such as 987654321 or QwErTy.
7. Use a different password for each system and service that you use.
8. Change your passwords regularly. The more important the system, such as electronic banking, the more frequent they should be changed.
9. Don’t use a password that can be linked back to you, such as using your date of birth, your wife’s name or your pet’s name.
10. Make sure your password is at least 8 characters long. For important systems, such as electronic banking, a password of 15 characters of longer is far more secure.
11. According to Microsoft, a password of 15 random letters and numbers is around 33,000 times stronger than an 8 character password.
12. Don’t use an incremental password system, such as mYpAssword01, mYpAssword02, mYpAssword03 and so on.
13. Don’t write your passwords down
14. Don’t share your passwords or tell anyone else.
15. Make sure you use non alphanumeric characters such as ,.<>?/;:@’~#{}[]_+-=()*!”£$%^&

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