Summary of Password Requirements
Your password will expire every 90 days and must:
- be at least 12 characters in length
- contain at least one character from three of the following categories: uppercase letter, lowercase letter, number, or special character
- never be reused (last six passwords are remembered)
- not include dictionary words (change a word to include a special character or a unique spelling (example: remember = r3m3mber or reembr.)
Suggestions to create a secure password:
- Make your password longer & more memorable
- Use a Passphrase
- Avoid personal info & common words
- Don’t use common words & patterns
- Keep passwords secure
Common Mistakes:
☹ Using obvious words or phrases like “password” or “letmein”
☹ Using names of family or pets
☹ Using the Season plus the year
(example: Winter21, Spring2022, etc. are some of the most common
passwords)
☹ Using sequences like “abcd” or “123”
☹ Taping passwords to the computer, monitor, desk, etc.
Create a strong password and a more secure account
A secure password helps protect the County network and all applications you log into.
Create a strong password
A strong password helps you:
- Keep your personal info safe
- Protect your emails, files, and other content
- Prevent someone else from getting in to your account
You can't use a password that:
- Is particularly weak. Example: "password123”
- You've used before on your account
- Starts or ends with a blank space
Follow tips for a good password
A strong password can be memorable to you but nearly impossible for someone else to guess. Learn what makes a good password, then follow these tips to create your own.
Make your password longer & more memorable
Long passwords are stronger, so make your password at least 12 characters long. These tips can help you create longer passwords that are easier to remember. Try to use:
- A lyric from a song or poem
- A meaningful quote from a movie or speech
- A passage from a book
- A series of words that are meaningful to you
- An abbreviation: Make a password from the first letter of each word in a sentence
Avoid choosing passwords that could be guessed by:
- People who know you
- People looking at easily accessible info (like your social media profile)
Avoid personal info & common words
Avoid creating passwords from info that others might know or could easily find out. Examples:
- Your nickname or initials
- The name of your loved ones or pet
- Important birthdays or years
- The name of your street
- Numbers from your address
Don’t use common words & patterns
Avoid simple words, phrases, and patterns that are easy to guess. Examples:
- Obvious words and phrases like "password" or "letmein"
- Sequences like "abcd" or "1234"
- Keyboard patterns like "qwerty" or "qazwsx"
Keep passwords secure
After you create a strong password, take steps to keep it safe.
If you need to write your password down, don’t leave it on your computer or desk. Make sure any written passwords are stored somewhere that’s secret or locked.
Create & Remember Secure Passwords
Excerpts from Simple Tricks to Remember Seriously Secure Passwords By Neil J. Rubenking
You need to lock your password manager with one secure master password, and you must remember it yourself. Here's how to do it.
You’re not allowed to use easy-to-remember passwords like your birthday or your dog’s name. You’re not allowed to use short, simple passwords. Even if you memorize a tough, warty password like $6k9iwb3&IBwxMpa, you’re not allowed to use it for more than one website. Frustrated yet? Save your sanity—engage the services of a password manager. With the help of such a utility, creating and memorizing a different strong password for every website is a snap.
Proper, full-scale password managers work on all your devices, be they desktops, laptops, smartphones, or tablets. They generate unguessable passwords like hoIlH&H#@GxKDNcT, remember them for you, and automatically use those saved passwords to log in to your secure sites.
But there's a problem. Almost every password manager relies on a master password to lock up all those saved passwords. The master password must be totally uncrackable, because anyone with access to it can unlock all your secure sites. But it also must be totally memorable, not like the gibberish that comes from a random password generator. If you forget the master password, nobody can help you. On the plus side, this also means a dishonest employee can't break into your password store, and the NSA can't force the company to turn over your data.
Let's assume you've done everything right, security-wise. You've installed an antivirus or security suite. A Virtual Private Network, or VPN, wraps your network traffic in protective encryption. And you've enlisted a password manager to deal with your plethora of passwords. You’re still stuck with remembering one insanely secure master password to lock down that password manager. Here are some tips on selecting a password that's both memorable and unguessable.
Make It Poetic
Everybody has a favorite poem or song that they'll never forget. It might be from Shakespeare, or Pussy Riot, or the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band. Whatever the stanza or verse, you can turn it into a password. Here's how.
Start by writing down the first letter of each syllable, using capital letters for stressed syllables and keeping any punctuation. Let's try this line from Romeo and Juliet: "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks?" From that, you'd get bS,wLtYdWdB? You could add A2S2 for Act 2, Scene 2, if that's something you'll never forget. Or 1597 for the year of publication.
If the passage doesn't have a strong meter, you can just take the first letter of each word, using the existing punctuation and capitalization. Starting with the quote "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken. - Oscar Wilde", you could come up with By;eeiat.-OW. Adding a memorable number rounds out the password, perhaps 1854 (his birthdate) or 1900 (his death).
Your poetic password will be completely different from these examples, of course. You'll start with your own meaningful song or quotation and convert it to a unique password that nobody else could guess.
Use a Passphrase
Password pundits always advise including all four types of characters: uppercase letters, lowercase letters, digits, and symbols. The reasoning is that by expanding the pool of characters, you vastly expand the time required to crack the password. But sheer length also serves to make cracking harder, and one way to achieve a long, memorable password is to use a passphrase.
Snarky, smart webcomic XKCD took aim at wacky password schemes that suggest starting with a common word, replacing some of the letters with similar-looking numbers, and tacking on a few extra characters. That can leave you wondering. Was it Tr0ub4dor&3, or Tr0ub4dor3&? Or maybe Tr0m30ne&3? A passphrase like correct horse battery staple is significantly more difficult to crack, due to its length and spaces between the words, but also much easier to remember. Then making adjustments to exclude “dictionary words” corr3t hors3 batt3ry stapl3.
Longer Passwords Are Better Passwords
Long-time PC maven Steve Gibson suggests that the secret to long, strong passwords is padding. If an attacker can't crack your password using a dictionary attack or other simple means, the only recourse is a brute-force scan of all possible passwords. And every added character makes that attack massively more difficult.
I don't try to watch people enter their passwords, but I've noticed quite a few that, based on hand motions, appear to end in three exclamation points. That's not the padding I'd suggest. First, it requires the shift key. Second, it's too predictable. I wouldn't be surprised if password cracking toolkits already included "!!!" in their dictionaries.
Instead, pick two close-at-hand keys and alternate, adding something like vcvcvcvc. Or choose three characters, like lkjlkjlkjlkj. Gibson's calculator says that it would take over 45 years for a "massive cracking array" to crack bS,wLtYdWdB? (the Romeo and Juliet password from my earlier example). Adding vdvdvdvd raises that to more than a quadrillion centuries.
Long, Strong, and Memorable
Work up a password based on a poem, song, or famous quote. Or create a passphrase, linking unrelated words with a memorable image or story. Then add some easy-to-type padding. You'll wind up with a master password that's both memorable and uncrackable.