25 Apr Portland IT Services Guidelines on Creating Strong Passwords

In your company, one of the most important thing that you, your management team, and every employee must never take for granted is your password. May it be the password for your company computer, company email, or company website, the password must always be extremely strong and very hard to guess. And if you have your own Portland IT services team, you can have them create strong passwords for your whole company. But of course, everyone must not save their password in their computer, and memorize them instead. However, if the passwords are too complicated to remember, you can write them down but make sure to store them in a place where no one can access, like your wallet, or a locked office drawer or vault. It is always good to remember that when your passwords are compromised, the security of your whole company is compromised as well. And so in this post, we talk about the guidelines of creating very strong passwords together with the assistance of your Portland IT services.

General guiding principle on creating strong passwords

Now let us discuss the general guidelines in coming up with a strong password that is very hard to guess by hackers. However, you need to take note that you should combine the different strategies, and not rely on just one so you will definitely have a password that proves to be a great challenge for hackers.

• When you choose a password, make sure to create a combination of numeric and alphabetical characters. But do not make it too obvious, like 1234abc or your name plus numbers. Make it harder, and make sure to never use your name or initials in making a password.
• Passwords are accepted when they are written in the exact order, and so create a mix of upper and lower cases of letters for the passwords. Do not create a pattern though that is easy to guess.
• If your system allows the use of certain symbols, then take advantage of it and incorporate symbols into your passwords. However, refrain from using spaces since it is usually ignored by the system.
• Always combine letters, numbers, and symbols in your passwords. You can create a password that is easy for you to remember, like a misspelling of a phrase that is totally unrelated to your name or to your favorite foods or hobbies.
• Create a password that is somewhat obscure, like a very odd character, a blend of two unrelated words, a difficult acronym, intentionally misspelled words, replacement of letters with numbers or other letters, or two or three words being separated by a punctuation or symbol.

Your reliable Portland IT services can help you set up the passwords so your network is absolutely secure from cyber criminals. But it is essential that you and your employees know how to create a strong password so they know how to help make your company more safe from cyber crimes.

The don’ts in creating a password

There are best practices in creating strong passwords, and there are also bad ones. Let us now look at the big don’ts in coming up with a password, especially for a business.

• Never use any part of your name in the password, like you first name, nickname, middle name, or last name. Do not even use them in reverse, or use your initials. You need to understand that your name, or the backward representation of your name is the first thing that hackers would check when they work on discovering your password.
• With the assistance of your  Portland IT services, you must advise against using the company ID number, or other forms of ID as the password. It doesn’t matter of the ID numbers are reversed in order or not. Any ID number must never be used as a password, because that is one of the major things that cyber criminals look at when they hack into your network.
• Even if it is not your name, avoid using other people’s name as your password, especially if you will use a name of your loved one, family member, ex, best friend, pets, or friends. Never make it easy for cold-hearted people to guess your password because the security of your company relies on it.
• Your Portland IT services will surely advise you not to create passwords that are less than eight characters. That is because passwords that are short are often easy to crack, and of course you want to avoid that occurrence. And so make your passwords longer than 8 characters, and make sure that you follow the guidelines above to ensure that you are safe from hackers.
• Many people make the mistake of creating passwords that involves their personal phone number, company address, company phone number, their date of birth, anniversaries, and other important days of their lives. However, those information are available online, mostly in the social media accounts of your employees, so hackers will have a field day in cracking their company passwords if they include their important numbers.
• Refrain from using words that may be unrelated to you but is exactly the same spelling as that in the dictionary. Even if you put a symbol before or after the word, it would still be easy to hack. Go for a password that has a misspelled spelling of a word, and combine symbols and numbers to make it strong.
• Your Portland IT services team knows that it is not a good idea to use all lower case or all upper case as your password, because it is simple to crack.

Conclusion

Having strong passwords is an essential aspect of keeping the security of your company. Trust that you can fight against hackers if you only have the weapon to shield your computers, emails, website, and other accounts from cyber attacks. And with the professional help of your Portland IT services team, your business can stand stall and secure amidst the rambling chaos of constant attempt on hacking and cybercrimes.