How To Make Your Website Secure With A Strong Password

Writing by Nick Stamoulis on Friday, June 26, 2009 Leave a comment

If you are creating your site using an open source solution like WordPress, Joomla, Pligg, or Drupal then you’ll need to make sure that you keep it safe from hackers. Hackers like to solve password puzzles and gain access to places they aren’t welcome. If you use a simple password that is easy to guess then you make yourself vulnerable to hackers and other malicious people.

So how do you make your passwords harder to guess? Here are a few tips:

• Make them long – Short passwords are easy to guess. Make your passwords longer.
• Don’t use dictionary words – Some robots will go through the dictionary and create a list of potential passwords from real words. They can be programmed to enter passwords while their human users sleep. If you use a simple dictionary word as a password then you could be opening yourself up to a hacking attempt.
• Use numbers and special symbols – In addition to being long, you should add numbers and special characters to your passwords. Some companies require their employees to use two numbers and two special characters in their passwords to gain access to the company intranet and other secure areas. You might institute a similar policy at your company.
• Use lower case and upper case letters – Another way to add security to your passwords is to use lower case and upper case lettering. Using only lower case letters makes you more vulnerable. Again, some companies make this a requirement for their employees.
• Don’t just use the obvious characters – The characters above the numbers on your keyboard are obvious choices. What are not obvious are other special characters like the < and > symbols and the copyright symbol.

The longer your password and the more different types of characters you use in your password, the more secure your password. Here are a few examples of bad passwords and how you can make them better.

• Bad = peter / Better = P3e*e”R9t1
• Bad = 123456789 / Better = 1a2$3B45u6:;7C89*
• Bad = meandyou1 / Better = m6e&Y1o0^u=U7s5

You want your password to be easy for you to remember but difficult to guess for a hacker or robot. If you keep that principle in mind then you’ll do well. Stay away from using important dates and names like your birthdate, anniversary, children’s baptism dates, and names of firstborns.

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