Are Your Passwords Safe?

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued new guidelines for password security that turn accepted wisdom about creating long strings of letters, numbers and symbols on its head.

NIST, a non-regulatory federal agency within the US Department of Commerce, issued the original advice in 2003 that became the global standard for password security. But it now says the advice led people to create predictably ‘complex’ passwords in a bid to remember them, which made them more vulnerable to hackers.

Key changes in NIST’s new digital identity guidelines include:

• Don’t arbitrarily mix letters, numbers and symbols to make a password. Instead, create passwords that are more memorable.
• Single dictionary words, the user’s street address or numeric sequences such as 1234567 should be banned.
• Organisations should screen the strength of their passwords against those used in cybercriminal dictionary attacks; a method of breaking into a password-protected computer or server by systematically entering every word in a dictionary as a password.
• Stop frequently changing passwords, for example each month, as it leads to poor passwords being created.

I absolutely agree with the last one, it has always seemed to me absolutely stupid to keep changing a password as long as it is secure.

As for the first one I am guilty of that because I use a password storage program called Keepass to create and store all my passwords. It has versions for both PC and Android so I can carry the encrypted file on my phone as well.

Re: Are Your Passwords Safe?

Hi

Totally agree.

Mine are fishing related with dates from memorable fishing trips.

Easy to remember for me.

Re: Are Your Passwords Safe?

I'm terrible with passwords, so much so my husband banned me from doing any financial things on my computer and he does it all.

I lose them, forget them and get locked out. So I then just use one I can remember for everything

I was the same with atm machine and my debit card.

Re: Are Your Passwords Safe?

Bruce
Whenever I log in, I keep getting the message 'password not secure' that it could be hacked as this website has not got 'https//:' in front of www. What can I do about it?

Or can anyone else answer my question?

Re: Are Your Passwords Safe?

One thing I really hate is when you are asked to choose a password but when you submit it, it isn't acceptable ie: it has to have so many letters, symbols, caps, numbers etc. I can't remember all that.

Re: Are Your Passwords Safe?

Mine are iron cast

Re: Are Your Passwords Safe?

You might want to have a look at this site:
https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Re: Are Your Passwords Safe?

My Firefox browser does this when I log into this site, it doesn't do it anywhere else though so I just ignore it.

Re: Are Your Passwords Safe?

Thanks Rhian.

Is that iron cast or ironcast?

Re: Are Your Passwords Safe?

Ooh I don't know
Have I erred?