Can you be more creative with the password? When the user creates a password, they think of something personal, which, in my suggestion, is entirely wrong. Personal passwords are often the most vulnerable way for users to use. According to the academic article written by Wash, “Good passwords have two goals that are very difficult to meet simultaneously: they must be sufficiently complex, unique, and difficult to guess that attackers cannot crack them, even using brute force (the security goal); and they must be sufficiently simple and straightforward that the user can easily remember them and enter them when they need to (the usability goal)” (Wash, 2021, P. 1 ) According to some of the articles that I have read, a solid and secured password consists with 12 characters. The 12 characters must be upper case, lower case, numbers, and special characters. In reference to the article that was written by Potuck,
“ “guest” beat out “123456” to be the most popular password among Americans in 2022.” (Potuck. 2023, P. 1) Can you believe that we are using “123456” as a password in 2022, where some of us have either heard about cybersecurity or heard about cyber-attacks? In our class, our professor mentioned that we must spread cyber security awareness with our family. Once our families, friends, and grandparents are educated on cyber security awareness, they are protected from cyberbullying or hacking. At least we must educate the close one to choose a strong password. Besides creating a strong password, we need to let them know about MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication), and this will guarantee that our loved ones are secured from hacking. We have gone over cyber hygiene, and I think creating a strong and secure password is one of the best ways to use cyber hygiene. According to Potuck, an example of a solid password could be X5j13$#eCM1cG@Kdc, and if you could look into it closely, there is no personal that is associated with the creator, no meaning, and it is not a complete word. Some websites help you create a strong password, but for some reason, I feel it is not safe to choose a password that a random website generates for you.
As you can see, the password is one of the crucial aspects of cyber security, and our societies do not have the cyber awareness that keeps our society at the water level; some of our people are drowning. There are many challenges that our society is facing with cybersecurity. Unfortunately, we have limited knowledge, especially with our families and loved ones. Those groups are getting affected by the cyber threat. “123456” is one of the passwords that was used in 2022, and this is a big concern towards me as a cyber student.
Work Cited:
Karbauskas, Šarūnas “How to create strong passwords: best practices (2023)” Nov. 5, 2023
https://cybernews.com/best-password-managers/how-to-create-a-strong-password/
Potuck, Michael “Study reveals top 20 most used passwords; 83% can be cracked in a second” May 2, 2023.
Wash, Rick “Prioritizing security over usability: Strategies for how people choose passwords” June 1, 2021