You make password decisions every week. Maybe you create a new account, reset a password or respond to a password change prompt. And each time you make a seemingly small or insignificant mistake in regard to password safety, such as not creating strong enough passwords or using the same password on multiple accounts, you increase your risk.
There are a lot of articles you can read about password safety, and it can be confusing to know who to listen to and what to follow. So we decided to turn to the trusted source for password security: the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-63B. The document contains many (many) pages of technical details and lots of government jargon, which makes it hard to read.
What NIST Says About Password Safety
So, we deciphered all the tips for you. Here are five simple actions you should take, both at home and work, to keep your data and network safe. Along with many other tips and guidelines from NIST, these are the most common mistakes and most surprising suggestions.
Don’t select passwords an attacker can easily guess. While this one is a no-brainer, it’s one of the most common mistakes. You can improve your password safety by not using a dictionary word, a password cracked in a previous breach, repetitive characters or a password that is part of your username or the application/service.
The NIST recommends that employers maintain a list of easy-to-guess words that include these types of passwords. From ..
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