Protect Your Digital Life: Why Strong Passwords Matter

A strong password goes a long way as a part of the digital landscape, where you have several accounts across websites and social media platforms. It cements your digital identity and protects your information online. And even though people are aware of this, many need to pay
more attention to the importance of having a strong password. In this post, we will emphasize the importance of creating strong passwords and discuss ways to upgrade your password protection game and safeguard your precious data and privacy online.

First Thing’s First – Strong Passwords Matter And Here’s Why

A strong password ensures that no miscreant will be able to access any of your accounts. This further means that they won’t be able to pounce on your personal information. They won’t be able to hack into your accounts, create accounts at your expense, or compromise your data.

Attacks From Which A Strong Password Can Save You 

• Dictionary Attack – An automated software runs a predefined ‘dictionary’ against your passwords and uses every single password combination generated including spelling combinations. To know more about it, you can check out this post.
• Phishing – In this, the hacker distributes emails to multiple recipients posing as a trusted party and obtains usernames, credit card details, passwords, and other information.
• Social Engineering – Here hackers exploit human psychology via fabricated scenarios, free software, quizzes, surveys, emails or even pretending to be a trustworthy figure to gain access to sensitive information.
• Brute Force Attack – Special programs are used by hackers to use every combination of alphabets and numbers in order to guess passwords.

A little later in this post, we’ll give you some of the best strategies and tips with which you can improve your password security.

Bad Password Habits That Keep People Away From Strong Passwords

To put it simply, if your password is not strong enough, you can soon fall prey to hackers who can exploit your digital life at any moment.

– Using Weak Passwords

ExpressVPN’s recent survey on people’s password practices & overall understanding of cybersecurity brought some shocking results. For example, they found out how 15% of their U.S. participants use weak passwords, including their pet’s name. Also, only 20% of users said they try to create “really complicated” passwords..

– Reusing The Same Passwords Again and Again

Many people use the same passwords again and again across websites and accounts thinking that this way they can save themselves the plight of remembering complex passwords and still maintain password hygiene. This is probably one of the biggest myths about password security.

We urge you to create distinct and strong passwords across the various platforms you use – websites, banking accounts, email accounts, video streaming platforms, online shopping portals, etc.

– Not Using A Password Manager

It’s humanly next to impossible to remember strong, complex, long, and random passwords, which is the need of the hour to thwart hackers. Password managers these days don’t just let you generate complex passwords for various platforms but pack inside several great features such as:

• Checking password strength.
• Keeping all passwords behind a single master password.
• Military-grade encryption.
• Ability to share passwords securely.
• Functionality to autofill passwords, form details, and other credentials.

– Ignoring Two-Factor Authentication

If passwords are your first line of defense, two-factor authentication (2FA) acts as your second line of defense. It essentially uses two different authentication factors. Ignoring this can compromise the efficacy of your overall password hygiene. Here is how safe two-factor authentication actually is.

– Sharing Passwords

The moment you share your passwords with someone in writing or verbally, you give them access to your sensitive information. Also, if you share your passwords with someone who is not trustworthy, that person may further circulate your passwords widely.

How To Improve Password Security

We’ll let you in on some best password protection tips and tricks so that you can secure your passwords and protect your information and privacy online –

– Create Strong, Complex and Unique Passwords

Your aim should be to generate passwords that are complex enough so that no technique can be used to hack them. Password creation ideas like these can help you get past malicious tactics like keylogging, dictionary attacks, brute force attacks, social engineering attacks, phishing, credential stuffing, etc. The best way to generate strong, random, and complex passwords is to use a password manager.

– Never Ever Share Passwords

Sharing passwords of accounts, applications, and even remote utilities can make you vulnerable to cyberattacks. Although sharing passwords is a big no, however, if you have to, follow these practices:

• Reset passwords on a regular basis especially if you have shared it with someone.
• Update passwords every few months.
• Never use the same passwords for multiple devices.
• Use a password manager to share passwords provided it offers that functionality.

– Keep Devices Locked and Updated

Knowing that you open websites, access social media accounts, do online banking, etc on a variety of devices – PCs, laptops, smartphones, tablets, etc, you should make it a habit to lock your device behind passwords, pins, and firewalls. It is also important that you fetch updates pertaining to your operating system regularly as with every update patches are released to minimize system vulnerabilities.

Break Free From Weak Passwords – Up Your Password Game

It’s time that you upgrade your password security tactics, steer clear of weak passwords, and safeguard your digital privacy from threat actors. If you found the information in the post helpful, do give us a shoutout in the comments section below. Also, share this post with everyone you care for. For more such content keep reading Tweak Library.