Creating Passwords - Advanced Horizons

Most users have difficulty creating good passwords. The norm is to use a simple word or some ones name. This is a result of an attempt to create a password that is easily remembered.

Problem

Passwords that contain a real word or name are too easy for someone to guess. You may think that people within your organization are not going to try and guess other people’s passwords. This is somewhat true. The big problem is that most systems have a modem attached or even worse have a connection to the Internet. In this case, your system can be exposed to the outside world of hackers.

Hackers are people who seem to have nothing better to do than try to break into systems. This is something you are trying to prevent by the use of passwords. When simple passwords are used, they can easily be discovered.

Note: Most systems don't recognize more than the 8 characters for the password. In addition many systems require a minimum of 6 characters. I don't know why, but 7 character passwords are harder to break than 6 or 8. So we recommend using password with 7 characters.

Solution

Option 1

First step is to use a two or three word phrase. Examples

the bull
dog sam
ford car

Option 2

Second step is to use character substitution by replacing certain letters with numbers. For the letters use...

O = 0 (zero)
L = 1
S = 5
A = 4
E = 3

This should be easy to remember because the shape of the numbers are similar to the shape of the letters.

Using the above examples the passwords would become...

the bull = th3 bu11
dog sam = d0g 54m
ford car = f0rdc3r

Option 3

Third step is to replace any spaces with some non-alphabetic characters such as ! @ # $, etc. or to drop the space entirely.

Using our examples and opting to use the ! for space, the passwords would now become

the bull = th3!bu11 (or for 7 characters drop the space = th3bu11)
dog sam = d0g!54m
ford car = f0rd!c3r (or for 7 characters drop the space = f0rdc3r)

Yes, these passwords look strange and this is precisely the idea. You don’t want to use any words that can be found in the dictionary. By using the simple substitution method, the passwords are still easy to remember.

Option 4

A fourth option is to use numbers in place of any words that sound like numbers such as

one = 1
to =2
for = 4
etc.

You could also substitute single letters for words that sounded like a single letter such as

be=b
bee=b
gee=g
tee=t
etc
You can also drop all spaces.

Using these methods the phrase

To be or not = 2b0rn0t

Fix it now!

Talk to your users now and discuss their current passwords
Make sure all users are using a password
Make sure their passwords are not easy to crack
Don’t put this off until it is too late

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