Iowa Specialty Hospital

Change Your Passwords for Passphrases

September 6, 2018

by Ash Hanson
Privacy/Security Officer


Passwords are something you use almost every day, from accessing your email or banking online to purchasing goods or accessing your smartphone. However, passwords are also one of your weakest points; if someone learns or guesses your password they can access your accounts as you, allowing them to transfer your money, read your emails, or steal your identity. That is why strong passwords are essential to protecting yourself. However, passwords have typically been confusing, hard to remember, and difficult to type. In this reminder, you will learn how to create strong passwords, called passphrases, that are easy for you to remember and simple to type.

Passphrases

Passphrases are a simpler way to create and remember strong passwords.

The challenge we all face is that cyber attackers have developed sophisticated and effective methods to brute force (automated guessing) passwords. This means bad guys can compromise your passwords if they are weak or easy to guess. An important step to protecting yourself is to use strong passwords. Typically, this is done by creating complex passwords; however, these can be hard to remember, confusing, and difficult to type. Instead, we recommend you use passphrases--a series of random words or a sentence. The more characters your passphrase has, the stronger it is. The advantage is these are much easier to remember and type, but still hard for cyber attackers to hack. Here are two different examples:

Tatertot casserole ROCKS!

Time for tea at 1:23

What makes these passphrases so strong is not only are they long, but they use capital letters and symbols. (Remember, spaces and punctuation are symbols.) At the same time, these passphrases are also easy to remember and type.

You can make your passphrase even stronger if you want to by replacing letters with numbers or symbols, such as replacing the letter 'a' with the '@' symbol or the letter 'o' with the number zero. If a website or program limits the number of characters you can use in a password, use the maximum number of characters allowed. Here is an example: T@tertot casserole R0CK5!

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