New Year - Time for a New Password

By Christian Goodrich

It's the start of a new year and the perfect time for a new password.

With cheap graphics cards now readily available, most passwords are vulnerable. Having a long complex password which you change regularly greatly improves your login security.

Password generators are a great method of generating a random secure password for each login profile you create.

Another tip to increase your online security is to reduce your online presence by deleting old accounts you no longer use. Do you still have a MySpace account which hasn't been visited for months/years? Remember this is a database containing your information, and if you never use the site then you're unlikely to know that it has been breached.

Additionally, having the same password for everything is never a safe option - if one profile is compromised, it's only a matter of time before the more important ones are accessed and information is stolen. Different passwords for each site will make it more difficult for cyber criminals to access more of your personal information.

Here are our top tips for password safety:

• Use a mix of upper and lower case characters, numbers, and symbols such as: f9£*Ks29

• The longer the better - a phrase would be best, such as: IL0v3mAnCh35t3rUn1t3dFC. Try to think up a random line like a lyric from a song or a line from a book and formulate a password using the first letter of each word to create a phrase that is easy to remember for you, but difficult for others to guess.

• Change your password regularly. You should change all of your passwords at least twice a year, and make sure you don't reuse a password for at least 2 years.

• Don't use dictionary words or obvious passwords such as: password123, 1234, yourname123

• Don't use dates of birth, initials, names or anything that would be easy to guess from a social media profile such as: John1975

• Try to avoid using real words - nowadays hackers are finding it easier and easier with today's technology to try every word in the dictionary in a reasonably short space of time. For this reason, it's far more cryptic to use made-up words to form part of your password.

• Only keep profiles for sites that you are actively using.

• Test your password using an online password checker. These can help you by evaluating the strength of your password automatically to see how easy it is to guess.