Orange County Computer Lawyer Blog

Happy Computer Security Day

November 30th is computer security day.  It was started in 1988 to raise awareness of computer related security issues.  Perhaps you should celebrate it by changing your password.  According to a survey reported on Out-Law.com, nearly two-thirds of people never change their passwords.  Some experts suggest that you should only keep a password for 60 to 90 days.  I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember passwords which change that frequently – especially when I have different passwords for different purposes.

I have been using a technique to create strong passwords for years, since I have notice the technique starting to appear on other websites (Microsoft’s Strong Passwords, for example), I’ll share it here.  First, think of a phrase which is easy for you to remember.  Then use the first letter of each word in the phrase – this is a good starting point for a password.  Then, try to exchange numbers for some of the words and add punctuation.  For example,  “My dog Spot used to bark when I came home from work.”  Take the first letters, mdsutbwichfw.  Swap a 2 for “to” – mdsu2bwihfw.  An exclamation point after the bark should be easy to remember so now we have mdsu2b!wichfw.  If the password is case-sensitive maybe we could capitalize the first letter of the phrase, Spot’s name and the I.  Now we have MdSu2b!wIchfw.  That is a pretty good password that is going to be hard to guess – but it should be easy for you to remember.  Do not bother trying to remember the letters – remember the phrase.  It will quickly become a habit to type the right letter as you are remembering your dog Spot.  Try it – it works.  It also makes it very hard to tell someone your password without thinking.  Trust me – you won’t be able to verbalize your password without considerable thought – but you will be able to type it dozens of times a day with no effort at all.