Email sent by Rene Thatcher on October 12th 2022. Message written by Steve Millington.
Tuesday Tip #2 is: The longer the password the better! Why not use a passphrase? #cybersecurityawarenessmonth22
No one gets excited about typing in a long password to access websites. Especially if it is something that they use frequently. However, a lot of the things we access all of the time contain the most sensitive information about us that cyber criminals are looking to acquire.
Using a long and complex password is a great way to help protect that information. The longer and more complex your password is, the more difficult it is for a cyber criminal to use technology to “crack” your password. In IT we call this a “Brute Force” password attack.
Here are some recommendations that will help you avoid a “Brute Force” attack
- Create long passwords – The longer the better. The more characters there are in a password, the larger the number of computations a computer program will have to undertake to figure out what your password is.
- Create complex passwords – Use spaces, upper and lower case, numbers, and symbols to increase the complexity of your password.
- Use a passphrase, which is a sentence like password with the complexity mentioned above.
- Example: Cyber 22winAgiftfor#12PersontoWritemedirectly!!
Here is an interesting chart from Hive Systems, https://www.hivesystems.io/password-tablea, leading cyber security company, that outlines how long it takes for a cyber criminal to crack a password with “Brute Force” using current technology capabilities.
Characters
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Numbers Only
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Lowercase Letters
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Upper and Lower Case Letters
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Numbers, Upper/Lower Case Letters
|
Numbers, Upper/Lower Case, Symbols
|
4
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
5
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
6
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
7
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
2 Sec
|
7 Sec
|
31 Sec
|
8
|
Instantly
|
Instantly
|
2 Min
|
7 Min
|
39 Min
|
9
|
Instantly
|
10 Sec
|
1 Hour
|
7 Hour
|
2 days
|
10
|
Instantly
|
4 Min
|
3 Days
|
3 Weeks
|
5 Months
|
11
|
Instantly
|
2 Hr
|
5 Months
|
3 Years
|
34 Years
|
12
|
2 Sec
|
2 Days
|
24 Years
|
200 Years
|
3k Years
|
13
|
19 Sec
|
2 Months
|
1k Years
|
12k Years
|
202k Years
|
14
|
3 Min
|
4 Years
|
64k Years
|
750k Years
|
16m Years
|
15
|
32 Min
|
100 Years
|
3m Years
|
46m Years
|
1bn Years
|
16
|
5 Hr
|
3k Years
|
173m Years
|
3bn Years
|
92bn Years
|
17
|
2 Days
|
69k Years
|
9bn Years
|
179bn Years
|
7tn Years
|
18
|
3 Weeks
|
2m Years
|
467bn Years
|
11tn Years
|
438tn Years
|