Password Manager - Use your passwords properly

What is a strong password?

A good password meets the following criteria:

• Use capital letters, numbers and special characters ((e.g. %!@*).
• Make sure the password has at least 12 characters.
• Do not put a word or name in the password. Traffic3&%' is NOT a strong password. 'Tr4ff1c3&%' Where you replace the a with a 4 and the i with a 1 is already better.

A password manager will take care of all this for you.

Choosing and using strong passwords

There are still a lot of people who use a very easy to remember word as their password. 'Password123!' to name just one. And then they use that password for all the accounts they have. Seriously, it is the worst thing you can do. Because if cybercriminals manage to get the password to one of the accounts (which is very easy with such a password), then the same cybercriminals will look for other accounts that they can use to log in with the same data. And before you know it, all your accounts have been breached, they have changed the password and they can even place orders that are debited from your account. All of which is so easy to prevent. The choice to use an easy to remember password is understandable. Chances are you have multiple email addresses, different social media accounts and accounts with a number of webshops. If you have to come up with all these different passwords, you must have a photographic memory to remember them all. Fortunately, this is no longer necessary.

Password manager

Many security programmes nowadays include a password manager. It's a lifesaver if you want to be assured of unique passwords that you don't have to remember yourself. Because the password manager does that for you. A password manager has one master password. That same password manager can also make up a very strong password for you. You don't have to remember it, it is stored, heavily encrypted, in the digital safe. This way, you can use a unique password for all your accounts that you don't have to remember. If you want to log into one of your accounts, the password manager knows which password belongs to it and fills it in automatically. Super secure and to be honest, indispensable.