Common-sense Guidelines for a Good Password Hygiene

Passwords are a vital component used to access digital assets, that is why "Password Hygiene" is one of the highest priority requirements in large organizations.

There are some common-sense guidelines that should be followed for a Good Password Hygiene to secure sensative data at work and in your pesonal life.

Choosing a strong password

A strong password is one that is more secure by virtue of being difficult for a machine or a human to guess. Password strength can be achieved by incorporating the following characteristics; the more characteristics you incorporate into your password, the stronger it will be.

Characteristics of strong passwords

• At least 8 characters (the more characters, the better)
• A mixture of both uppercase and lowercase letters
• A mixture of letters and numbers
• Inclusion of at least one special character

Examples of weak passwords

• Any word that can be found in a dictionary, in any language (e.g: love or yerevan)
• A dictionary word with some letters simply replaced by numbers (e.g: 10v3 or y3r3v@n)
• A repeated character or a series of characters (e.g: AAAAA or 12345)
• A keyboard series of characters (e.g: qwerty or poiuy)
• Personal information (e.g: birthdays, names of pets, phone numbers or favorite color)
• Anything that’s written down and stored somewhere near your computer

Protecting your password

• Change it regularly (once every three to six months)
• Change it if you have the slightest suspicion that the password has become known by a human or a machine (e.g: website or malicious software)
• Avoid typing it on computers that you do not trust (e.g: computer of your colleague)
• Never save it for a web form on a computer that you do not control or that is used by more than one person
• Never store your password on your computer except in an encrypted form
• Never send your password via email or other unsecured channel
• Never tell it to anyone, not even your system administrator
• Be very careful when entering your password with somebody else next to you
• Never write it down

Remembering your password

A strong password is hard to guess, but it should be easy for you to remember. So what can you do?

• Use a secure password manager
• Use a text file encrypted with a strong encryption utility

Summary

It is really important to note that he main target of security is not only creating rules but also following them.