In the electronic age that we live in, we are constantly being asked to set up usernames and passwords for the companies we deal with in our day-to-day lives. Unless you have a photographic memory, like Sheldon from the TV show ‘The Big Bang Theory’, it can be extremely hard to keep track of these multiple login details, and we’ve all been guilty of using the same password over and over again, to save us the hassle. This is not such a bad thing, if you make that reusable password difficult for hackers to identify.

We all know that we shouldn’t use easily identifiable passwords, like our date of birth, or sequential numbers like 1234, but did you know that there are a few easy tips to follow which will make your password more secure, without putting too much strain on your brain?

When hackers scan the Internet for passwords, they essentially use a sequence to run thousands and thousands of combinations until they get a match. They scan for special characters (e.g. # & . @), numbers and letters. For example, if your password only includes four letters (e.g. bank), the hackers will guess it almost instantly.  If, on the other hand, your password included some numbers and special characters (e.g.[email protected]), it would take exceedingly more time  for guessing  the password to be identified.

Another great tip is to use a phrase from your favourite book or movie and turn that into a secure password. An example might be: “Life is like a box of chocolates” (a quote from the movie “Forrest Gump”). This could become: “[email protected]”. If you then added the name of the company at the end of the password, you would have multiple, unique passwords, but you won’t have to wrack your brain to remember them all.