How to secure your passwords

Why passwords MUST be protected? Some of you know the reason but most of you guys are keeping your passwords safe because you see other people do it or just because of the meaning of the word "password". If you think that your Facebook password must be protected more than your Twitter account password because you don't use Twitter often you are completely wrong. I will leave the link here for you to read the story of "Epic Hacking - Mat Honan" to understand how much damage a single password can do!  

First of all we should look at how to secure passwords.There are too many ways to do this but some of them are not that much accurate.

1. Two factor authentication.  

This is the best way to secure passwords. Two factor authentication means instead of using one means of authentication (static/dynamic) user use two means of authentication (static & static/ dynamic & dynamic / static & dynamic ).

What are these static and dynamic means of authentication? 
Static - Something that user knows or user possesses. eg:- ID card, Passcode
Dynamic - Something that user does or user is. eg:- Hand movements, Voice recognition, IRIS scanning

Advantage of having Two factor authentication is that even though an attacker knows the password for a particular account he will not get the access to it. In order to get that he has to find out the other factor also. Facebook, Gmail and other social media and services provide Two factor authentication.


2. Combination of lower case, upper case, alpha numerical characters

Passwords are vulnerable to brute force attacks. Therefore if you only use upper case or lower case letters it will be easy for an attacker to break your password.

3. Having a password which contains at least 8 characters 

When the password length increases according to that number of combinations also get increase. If the number of combinations are huge process of breaking the password will take huge amount of time. Sometimes it will be not possible for the attacker because the process requires a lot of processing power.

4. Always avoid using solitary words

Solitary means existing alone. That means do not use words that exists in any language.

5. Do not use names of people, places, things, and characters 

6. Do not write down passwords 

Since people do not like to memorize passwords they tend to write them down on papers. Sometimes they write down credentials on a sticky note and paste it on the monitor at the work place. If that is the case why they have a password to log in? Anyone can use anyone's device or an account. 

7. Always log out from devices or accounts once you are done. Otherwise workstation hijacking can occur.