Do you believe your password is secure enough?

You may want to reconsider. In 2014, five giant corporation websites were hacked and sold on the black market in a matter of mere days. Reports show that over a billion personal data records were compromised worldwide by cyber-attacks. Nearly half of all online Americans had their personal information revealed by these hackers. On top of that, both the private and public sectors of government and business were targeted and exposed as well.

With more businesses using cloud and content network delivery services, keeping your records secure has become more important than ever. And with criminals stepping up their game like never before, data breaches are becoming both common and devastating.

Use complex passwords

Using a complex and indistinguishable password, and changing it on a frequent basis, can mean a world of difference between keeping your private information safe and having it stolen.

It can be difficult to remember complex passwords in vast numbers, one for every different service you’re using. This is why Password Crypt specializes managing your passwords from one place, so that you only need worry about one password. And the best part? You could start using Password Crypt today!

Test the strength of your password

Here at Password Crypt, we have gathered a deep understanding of the complexity and nature of online security, so that we can help you tighten up your safety online and keep hackers away from your personal information and your business files.

To give you a better understanding of how secure your passwords are, we have come with an online tool that simulates how quickly a skilled hacker could brute-force a password. Our online tool is an interactive feature that lets you test the strength of your password, where you will be given an estimate of how secure your password is, and more importantly, how long it would take a computer to crack it.

As mentioned, hackers will often use the process of brute-forcing a password, which is a process in which the hacker will use a program that methodically checks known and popular password combinations until finding the correct one, based on length and character types.

You may experiment and come up with new passwords using our interactive tool and see for yourself just how many days, months, or even years worth of security an extra letter, number, or symbol may make of a difference.

Note: Our interactive tool is for educational purposes only, and we do not collect or store any passwords you type in.

Length matters

As you can see from our chart above, the amount of characters used in a password do matter, and the more characters you use, the harder it is for the brute-force program to ‘guess’ your password.

A 2010 Georgia Tech Research Institute study showed how a 12-character randomized password could qualify for the minimum length requirement to defeat code breaking and brute-forcing software. In our day and age, using passwords with only 8 characters isn’t recommended. And we agree with the experts; the longer and more complex your passwords are, the better.

One thing to note, however, is that each character is not equal. Simply adding a 9 to a ‘12345678’ password will do nothing to boost your security. This is why we recommend using a mix of capitalized and lower-caps letters, numbers, and ASCII symbols.

Using symbols in passwords

Creating combinations of several types of characters is a very efficient way of making your passwords harder to crack and protecting your personal information. It is especially true for today, as passwords over time are becoming weaker. As time passes by, strong passwords weaken and become easier to crack.

Simple words and phrases, or commonly used passwords can be cracked faster than the human eye can blink. What you can do to prevent that from happening is to mix up your letters with a combo of lowercase and uppercase. Adding numbers and symbols, as seen above in our good password examples, can make a world of difference.

We do not recommend replacing letters with numbers or symbols, for example using a 3 in place of an ‘e’. This is bad password practice as brute-force programs have been developed to crack a password with that line of operating in mind. Instead, make your passwords unique and unpredictable.

Security experts are in agreement that upper and lowercase alphanumerical characters are good practices for increasing passwords strength and making it capable of resisting guessing and brute-force attacks. In order to add complexity without compromising ease-of-use, users can modify passphrases by inserting spaces, punctuation, and intentional misspellings.

It can be very daunting having to come up with so many passwords. This is why Password Crypt offers you your own personal password manager, with the ability to import and export your passwords, browser extensions to one-click login, and much, much more.

Recovery

The important thing to do if your email account gets hacked is to, naturally, recover your account, and change your password. Using our guidelines here, you can ensure yourself a safe and protected password.

Since your email is filled with personal information that might be very sensitive, it is critical that you inform your bank, PayPal, online stores or services that hold your personal details such as payment methods, and any other accounts you may have. Informing them will help you discern whether the breach has extended into any of those services.

Changing your password all across your applications on the web is highly recommended, so that a breach like this is less likely to happen again.

Addendum

We hope our guide has been helpful in your quest for a safe and secure password. When you’re ready to take the next step into maximizing your own safety online, take a look at the benefits you will reap from using Password Crypt.

Thank you for reading this safety guide – and feel free to share with your friends and loved ones, so that they may be informed to make the right decision when using passwords online.