strong password

You can make your password much harder to break by using more characters, mixing upper and lower case letters, and including numbers and special characters. According to a security guide from Texas A&M University's Research Foundation, a six-character, single-case password has 308 million possible combinations, all of which a password cracker can go through in just a few minutes. Combining upper and lower case letters and using eight characters instead of six increases the possible combinations to 53 trillion; substituting a number for one of the letters yields 218 trillion possibilites; and substituting a special character or punctuation for another yields 6,095 trillion possible combinations. Although a password cracker can eventually go through that many combinations, it requires much more time and computing power.

People like to use passwords that will be easy for them to remember. A Microsoft article about security suggests that you use a memorable phrase instead of a word, and convert that phrase to a password. For example, the phrase, "I have 2 Labrador retrievers! Fido and Spot." could be expressed as Ih2Lr!F+S.

Read more about strong password: - SearchNetworking features an article called "Business security begins with a strong password policy." - Microsoft provides a security checklist: Creating Stronger Passwords. - Texas A&M University Research Foundation's security guide provides a tutorial on Weak Passwords.

Do you have something to add to this definition? Let us know. Send your comments to techterms@whatis.com

Digg This!     StumbleUpon     Del.icio.us

RELATED CONTENT Correct improperly assigned user rights in Windows XP Find out why your users might have different rights in Windows XP than what you want them to have. Free security testing tools for Windows handheld devices With these free security testing tools, you can test network security from Windows handheld devices. Do old certificates pose a Windows security threat? Do old security certificates pose a security threat to Windows machines? Find out here.