People usually say size matters when it comes to password strength. The longer a password is, the harder it is to crack using brute force algorithms. However, password length is only one factor contributing to password security.
How to harden your password?
One way to create a strong password is by using several characters. The more characters used, the harder a password is to crack.
The four character sets are:
- Numerical characters such as 12345
- Lowercase characters such as abcdefg
- Uppercase characters such as ABCDE
- Special characters such as !$%&?
A password consisting exclusively of numerical characters has only ten possible options for each character (0–9). If a password is six numerical characters in length, a hacker can attempt one million possible combinations (10 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 x 10).
However, a six-character password consisting of numbers and lowercase letters has thirty-six options for each character (0–9 plus a — z). Now, rather than one million possible combinations, 2,176,782,336 possible combinations exist for a six-character password.
Adding Randomness increases security
A password’s overall randomness also contributes to better password security, and passphrases are an easy way to achieve that. Using a passphrase helps as it combines memorable words or phrases known to the user but less recognizable by hackers.
Another way to strengthen passwords is to avoid commonly used dictionary words or repeated or sequential characters, such as “qwerty”. Likewise, some very long passwords appear in password dumps with remarkable frequency.
One such password is d1k20,q.26n12$$4001nf105j13@$$02@, which, despite being thirty-four characters in length, would be among the first couple of thousand attempts by a brute force hacker.
How password managers help
A password manager helps generate and store unique and complex passwords for each account. The benefit of storing passwords in a password manager is that they are encrypted, hashed, and salted to prevent authorized access — which is a far safer option than storing passwords in plain text format in Word documents or Excel spreadsheets!
