October is almost over so here are some last minute tips on how to beef up your Cyber Security Awareness

Use Strong Passwords

Examples of weak passwords are:

1. Default passwords like admin, password, root
2. ANY word in a dictionary
3. Obfuscated words like: Te$t, d00rno8, B1ack
4. Repeated words: funfun, salesale
5. Keyboard Sequences such as: asdfg, qwerty, 12345
6. Number Sequences like: 12345, 0987654321
7. Your user name or email address
8. Personal Identifiers like: your phone number, current or previous address, birthdays, kids or pets names

Remembering complex passwords can be difficult. Try a mnemonic style password, this could be accomplished by using the first letter of each word in a phrase for example:
“The orange fox jumped over the cow and ran back to her den in the deep dark forest.”
This phrase would then become the password:

tofjotcarbthditddf

The key here is to achieve high entropy (randomness/disorder) and if you want to be extra secure use an uppercase letter and surround your password with symbols:

_Tofjotcarbthditddf_

The first password would achieve a quality of 60 bits, pretty good, but by adding an uppercase letter and surrounding the password with underscores you would achieve a quality of almost 100 bits–Much harder to crack.

For those who have trouble remembering all your passwords check out http://keepass.info/ a free password manager that uses strong encryption, and has a smartphone app!

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