A new year is a great time to brush up on your daily security practices. The easiest place to start is something that you likely use every day- your work passwords!

Here are five quick tips to make your passwords un-hackable this year:

1.       Make your passwords unique! Make your passwords different for each platform to avoid a wide-spread breach if one of them is compromised. Never make your work passwords the same as your personal ones- these are much easier for a hacker to crack!

2.       Use a passphrase instead of a password! A passphrase is a simple phrase you can use to make your password memorable for you and hard to breach for a hacker. For example, instead of building your password around a single word like “Hello” try “YouHadMeAtHello”.

3.       Leave out the personal information! Cyber-criminals use the internet and social media to find clues about your passwords, so a pet’s name or child’s date of birth are no longer secure enough to use for a password.

4.       Be creative with the placement of special characters and numbers! Placing a “1!” at end of a password is the most common combination of number and character additions- making it also the most hackable. Instead, try incorporating these elements into a passphrase to make them harder to spot. Using our previous example, you can turn “YouHadMeAtHello” into “YouH@dM3@tH3llo” and create a much more secure password.

5.       Use a password manager! Keeping track of different passwords for every login is more than a simple post-it note can handle! Use a secure online password manager to keep track of your different passwords instead. Many of these platforms have auto-fill and password creation tools that make keeping a secure password even easier. At M3, we recommend Dashlane, Lastpass, or Passly as great password management tools.

For more information on how to implement secure password policies, give us a call at 682-253-6631 and let’s make your 2022 the most un-hackable year yet!