What’s a Good Password?
Good security starts with your Password!
Good passwords make a big difference to the effectiveness of your cyber security, but a bad password leaves you openly exposed to cyber threats. This article helps you discover what passwords are useless, and how you can create and remember great passwords to improve your cyber security.
Good Passwords
Good passwords use uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters. For example, Pa55woRd# (please DON’T use this sample as your new password: it’s too obvious!)
Bad Passwords
Top 20 passwords in Australia for 2021:
If you find your password on the below list, we recommend you change it immediately!
- 123456
- password
- lizottes
- password1
- 123456789
- 12345
- abc123
- qwerty
- 12345678
- holden
- charlie
- 1234567
- qwerty1
- 111111
- dragon
- 1234
- 1234567890
- qwerty123
- australia
- princess
Not only is ‘123456‘ the most popular password in Australia, according to 2021 research by NordPass it is the top password in 43 countries out of 50 analysed. That makes ‘123456’ the most popular – and therefore useless – password you can use for your cyber security!
200 Most Common Passwords Of 2021 in Australia – Australian Cyber Security Magazine
Create a good password you can remember
We understand that remembering a secure password can be tricky. So here’s an easy tip to help you remember your passwords: you can make great passwords by using sentences that make sense to you:
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 three sample sentences that might inspire you:
OhnoHwtGF! = Oh no! Hawthorn won the Grand Final!
House@#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!
Password Manager apps help create and maintain good passwords
If you feel overwehelmed by the need to create – and remember – good passwords, then consider using a Password Manager app. A password manager assists in generating complex and secure passwords. Your passwords are kept stored in an encrypted database for you. We suggest using a password manager like Dashlane or Lastpass.
Get help for your password and cyber security problems
itro wants to help you
When it comes to keeping your business cyber secure, it’s important you have a dedicated resource to prioritise and look after your various security measures. If you don’t have the internal resources or commitment to do this, get itro to manage your cyber security for you. We can configure your network to demand complex passwords from your users or enforce a password change at appropriate intervals. When you ask itro to manage your IT and cyber security, you get a team of engineers with a wide range of skills dedicated to keeping your systems and data safe and protected.
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.
Why bother changing a weak password?
Weak passwords are what cyber criminals want you to use. It makes their job of inflicting ransomware viruses onto your devices easy!
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! If you are using a common, easily guessed password (like the 20 passwords listed above) you are undermining whatever cyber security you have, and putting your data at grave risk.
Avoid ‘Transf0rmative’ Passwords
It’s good idea to change your passwords on a regular basis. We recommend you change passwords once a year. As an annual task it’s easy to diarise and action. And by changing your passwords once a year, or even every second year, it stops you or your team from weakening your security by using transformative passwords (eg password1, password2, password3), or writing them down.
