Hey, everyone! Yes, it’s been quite a while since I’ve posted something on my blog that wasn’t related to what I was wearing. I bet you all forgot that I did other things on here, huh? LOL

Anyway…

For those that know me, I have been VERY interested at getting into the cyber/information security field, chiefly, awareness and education. SANS Institute has a way of perfectly describing this particular field.

Awareness and education is what we DO, but what we ARE, are managers of human risk. Well, I’m not actually DOING it yet, but I’m trying to get there!

This has been the driving force behind my passion and the purpose of these “Ask Me” blog posts. To educate you, the non-technical masses, so that you are more aware of what’s going on, and to help better arm and protect you from the nasty cyber criminals out there.

Anyways, I’m rambling, so let me get back on topic…

I was working on a poster to put on my office door the other day, because it’s what I do, and I also wanted to try to educate some of my coworkers as well, and maybe strike up some conversation about it (it’s hasn’t worked yet, but shhhhh…). The poster touches on password security.

You all know about passwords. You use them EVERY single day, whether checking your email, banking online, downloading the latest TikTok-like (TikTik, TokTok, KlokKlok?) app, and so on. I’m sure you’ve heard time and time again from various sources:

Don’t reuse passwords.

Don’t reuse passwords.

DON’T. REUSE. PASSWORDS.

Simple enough, right? Don’t reuse passwords. And so, you go to your banking/email/KlokKlok site, and go through the process to change your password. What do you usually see? This mess:

• Password must be 8 characters long
• Password must contain uppercase characters
• Password must contain lowercase characters
• Password much contain a number
• Password must contain a special character, such as – _ ? < > = +

What do you do? You think, and you think, and YOU THINK of something, ANYTHING, that will meet all of those requirements.

Here’s a (not so) little secret:

HUMANS ARE HORRIBLE AT COMING UP WITH A COMPLEX PASSWORD AND REMEMBERING SAID COMPLEX PASSWORD.

Here’s an example. Consider this password. It’s definitely complex, and meets all of the requirements up above:

*G8Fed@$H5bGCv

It’s EXTREMELY secure, as https://security.org says it will take quite some time for someone to guess it.

Can YOU remember passwords like this? I know I sure can’t. Next time you need to come up with a password, try picking 4 simple random words, separate each word with a dash (or some other character), and throw a number in there. Something like this:

dog-cat-apple-Jacks1

MUCH easier to remember, huh? And guess what? It’s even MORE secure than that gobbledegook up there.

There ya go! As important and as crucial passwords are (until someone figures out something great to replace them with), they certainly don’t have to be hard to remember.

Hope you enjoyed this!

Have a topic or a question you’d like for me to try and write about? Drop me a line! You can find me on Twitter (@SecureInStyle), or you can email me at terry@secureinstyle.blog.