When life embraced the Internet a few decades ago, passwords were a necessary evil. We chose our pet’s name or birth date or some easy to remember piece of information to grant us access to our destination. However, times have changed and the ease for hackers to decode your passwords continues to increase. This interesting information came to us from Phys.org in their article, “Why we choose terrible passwords, and how to fix them.”
For most applications there are now requirements that must be met for a password to be accepted. Upper case letters, numerals and symbols have been added to length requirements, and add to that the preference for passphrases.
The first Thursday in May was World Password Day. Seriously. Computer chip maker Intel created the event as an annual reminder that our password habits are nothing to celebrate. I know this feels unnecessary, but when you realize that the most popular passwords are still “qwerty” and “123456,” it drives home the need for better passwords.
The purpose of a password is to limit access to information. Simple passwords do not help with that goal. Every password has vulnerabilities. The goal is to limit them.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
