
What’s a Good Password?
Good security starts with your password!
- A good password should have an uppercase, lowercase, number and special character. For example, Pa55woRd# (DON’T use this sample as your new password: it is too obvious!)
- We highly recommend you change your passwords regularly: at least once a year! Current security recommendation is to only change passwords once a year or less. Shorter timeframes lead to lower security, as it encourages people to use transformative passwords (Like password1, password2, password3) or to write them down.
Top 20 passwords so far for 2018:
If you find your password on the below list, we recommend changing it immediately.
- 123456
- 123456789
- qwerty
- password
- 111111
- 12345678
- abc123
- password1
- 1234567
- 12345
- 1234567890
- 123123
- 000000
- iloveyou
- 1234
- 1q2w3e4r5t
- qwertyuiop
- 123
- monkey
- 123456a
Entire list of Top 100 Passwords
Notice your password? Why bother changing?
Weak passwords are the primary method used by CryptoLockers or ransomware. CryptoLockers and ransomware are the number 1 security threat today!
Once a hacker guesses an obvious password (eg, welcome, password, user name, street name, etc) they can use it to access your email server, send out mass spam emails, steal your data or worse – encrypt your data and lock you out until you pay a ransom! People are still using common, EASILY GUESSED passwords to ‘protect’ their data.
Stuck for ideas on creating a good password you can remember?
We understand that remembering a secure password can be tricky – after all, that’s the point! A good tip for creating passwords you can remember:
Take a sentence and turn it into a password.
The sentence can be anything personal and memorable for you. Take the words from the sentence, then abbreviate and combine them in unique ways to form a password. Here are four sample sentences that might inspire you:
OhnoHwtGF! = Oh no! Hawthorn won the Grand Final!
[email protected]#25GreenSt = Based on somewhere you used to live
1luvTEItF00d! = I love to eat Italian Food.
The possibilities are endless so please change your password today or better still, get us to force a password reset across your entire organisation!
Still stuck?
Security experts recommend using a password manager. A password manager assists in generating complex and secure passwords. The passwords are stored in an encrypted database for you. We suggest using a password manager like Dashlane or Lastpass but here is a list of password manager products in the market.
itro can help
We can configure your network to demand complex passwords from your users or enforce a password change every x-number of days. Please ring us directly on 1300 10 3000 or email your request to [email protected] if you want more information or take up our suggestions.
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