Keeping Your Password Protected on World Password Day (And Every Day)

World Password Day, held on the first Thursday in May, was created to raise awareness about the importance of having a strong, secure password.

With the increase in cybersecurity threats and new identity theft opportunities, Clearview wants to help equip you with the best information on how to keep your passwords as safe and secure as possible.

In honor of World Password Day, here are a few tips on how to protect and strengthen your passwords:

• Never give anyone your password. The golden rule of passwords is to never disclose them. Anyone who has administrative access to your accounts (like the magical IT people at your office) will never need you to tell them your password.
• Create strong passphrases. Don’t use easily available information for your secure passwords. That means no family names, no pets, no birthdays, and please no generic passwords (looking at you “password” and “12345”). Ideally, a strong passphrase will use more than 15 characters and still be easy to remember. Think of something that is memorable to you, but isn’t a line from a song or movie or something else well-known. For example, if you loved space camp as a kid and hate bananas, you could have a passphrase that looks something like “Hate bananas, space camp forever!” It makes sense to you and has over 30 characters, making it much harder for a hacker to break.
• Don’t use the same password for multiple accounts (especially your most important ones). This one may seem like a given, but you’d be surprised. A recent survey revealed that 81% of people use the same password for more than one account. That number increases to 92% among millennials! In this digital age, your online identity is tied together more than you may realize. Keeping different passwords for different accounts will only make it tougher to get access to your personal information.
• Use multi-factor authentication wherever possible. You need a card and a PIN to get money out of an ATM, right? Why wouldn’t you want that same level of security for your online accounts?