On Passwords – or !P@$$w0rd$

The most commonly used password is - you guessed it, “password.”  Followed closely by people’s initials, first name, etc.  You might as well use no password at all. When I go to a client and they don’t know the master password for certain applications, it generally does not take more than three or four tries to guess it.

Many people complain that using passwords is “too hard.”  But the solution is surprisingly easy. Pick a password that will be easy for you to remember and then do a certain number of substitutions for non-alpha-numeric characters.

For example, change a to @
change o to 0 (zero)
change s to $
change i or L to 1 (one)

In addition, you can preface or follow the password by a character such as tilde (~) or exclamation point (!), or put the year the person started work in parentheses (08).

All these will make a password that is easy to remember and extremely difficult to break or for anyone else to guess. Here’s some examples (in addition to the one in the title):

roadrage could become   ~R0@dr@ge
manicotti could become   !M@n1c0tt1
instantaccess could become (07)1N$t@nt@cce$$

Anyone looking at these will think “how can anybody remember that” but if you know the underlying word and the system, it is easy to remember.