Technology Support

A weak password is still one of the most common ways hackers break in.

 

Thanks to sophisticated "brute-force-attack" software readily available online, hackers can try tens of millions of possible password combinations per second. For example, hacking software can guess a five-character password in under three hours. If you only use lowercase letters, it’s 11.9 seconds.

 

You know you need to have a better password than “password” or “letmein” if you have any hope of keeping hackers out of your computer, but what does a “strong” password mean?

 

A good password should be at least eight characters long (or longer!) and have a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and symbols that are hard to guess. Using multiple phrases or sentences is even better.  Don’t use dictionary words with proper capitalization because they’re easy to guess (like Password123#). Even though it meets the requirements we just discussed, it’s easily hacked; remember, hackers have sophisticated password-hacking software that will run 24/7/365.