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Privacy & Security / Jul 23 2019

Strong passwords and how to remember them

Each year we have more and more online accounts and staying on top of our digital lives is getting increasingly difficult. Using strong passwords is essential, as they are the first line of defence for your data. Read about how to improve the strength of your passwords and how to remember them easily in this blog post.

Honestly, we probably all use the same password for a few different sites because there is no way you can remember a new password for every single one of your different accounts, right? Wrong.

Using strong passwords is essential for protecting your data. It prevents unauthorized access to your devices, accounts and your digital identity in general. Your password is your first line of defence from attackers, and data breaches are not going away anytime soon. So using strong passwords is essential. But what is really a strong password, how to remember it and what else - passwords aside - can help your data security online? Let's go step by step.

(1) What is a strong and safe password?

A strong and safe password is:

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(2) How to save your passwords with Password managers

As we already mentioned, strong passwords are not usually easily remembered. If you are using different passwords for all of your different accounts, as you should, there are only so many combinations you can keep in your head at once. Which is totally understandable. The good news is, password managers can do the work for you. So if remembering is not really your strong suit, consider using a dedicated application to generate, store and retrieve passwords for you. You will still need to remember the password to this application though. These apps can synchronize your information across machines, browsers, and even across mobile devices, which makes life much easier than keeping everything in your head, all the time. One of the more popular and free ones is LastPass. Consider enabling two-factor authentication on LastPass for additional security. Read more about 2-FA in the next point.

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(3) What is 2-FA and why it is good to use it?

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is an additional level of protection you can use on your accounts to make them more secure. It is used to make sure that people trying to gain access to an online account are who they say they are. First, a user will enter their username and a password. Then, instead of immediately gaining access, they will be required to provide another piece of information.

This second factor can come from one of the following categories:

This way, as simple or complex as your password is, it’s only half of the puzzle. With 2FA, a potential compromise of just one of these factors won’t unlock the account. So, even if your password is stolen or your phone is lost, the chances of someone else having your second-factor information is highly unlikely.

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