Could someone crack your password?

Published: 03/05/2023

World Password Day on Thursday 4 May provides a good opportunity to take a look at the passwords we use every day and consider how secure they are.

Your password is your first line of defence against anyone trying to access your online accounts.

A strong password should only be known to you and not contain information about you that can be discovered online, for example: your pet’s name. Even if you add numbers and special characters, hackers can gather information you share on social media and use this to repeatedly generate possible passwords until they guess correctly.

Despite all this, it's still important that your passwords are easy to remember. Here are a few methods and tools that you can use to create strong and memorable passwords.

The song method

Simply think of a memorable song, take a line or two from it and take the first letter of each word in the song. Put these together, add numbers, capital letters and special characters and you’ve got your new password.

The video to the right explains this method further with an example.

Three random words

This method is recommended by the National Cyber Security Centre. Come up with three words that are unrelated to each other, for example: porcupine, lemonade, colony. These words are in no way related to you or each other, yet it’s easy to imagine a colony of porcupines making lemonade so it’s simple to remember.

Keep in mind that your three words should not be objects around you, like items on your desk, and they should have some complexity to them. Short words like dog, cat, spy, sad etc. don’t add enough length to your passwords. If required you can incorporate capitalisation, numbers and special characters into them, and you may even chose more than three words!

Password managers

A password manager will generate very strong and unique passwords for you to use for your accounts. It will store each of these passwords and allow you to access them by entering a master password. Your master password should be strong and easy to remember, so use one of the methods above when creating one.

A good password manager will also notify you if any of your passwords are found in a data breach. When choosing one, opt for one that supports multi-factor authentication (MFA).

Security questions

These allow you to recover your account if you forget your password. Traditionally you could pick your questions from a set list of options but it’s becoming more common to allow users to write their own security questions. Like your passwords, the answers to your security questions should only be known by you while still being memorable.

Some poor security questions:

• Where was your first job? Not a good security question, as this can be found on your LinkedIn profile.
• What is your spouse’s name? Names of important people or pets in your life are bad security questions as they can easily be identified on social media.
• What is your favourite movie? Depending on how much you share, this could also be found out from your online profiles. It can also change over time, making it hard for you to get right.

Some good security questions:

• Where did your parents meet?
• What was your favourite teacher’s last name?
• What is your oldest cousin’s first name?

You can change your NTU password and set up your security questions using the NTU password manager.

Stay safe online with our cyber security online learning

Head to our Digital Skills unit in NOW and complete the Cyber Security Awareness unit to ensure you are:

• aware of security threats and know what to do if you think your data has been compromised
• able to identify the warning signs and how to avoid being a victim of phishing emails, social media fakes and suspicious websites
• developing good security practices when using Outlook and Teams
• confident reporting a data breach.

You can find plenty of advice and information on cyber security on StudentHub.