Passwords are being cracked, hacked, and guessed all over the place these days - with so many resources being protected with just a single password, making sure you have a good one is absolutely critical. There are plenty of good articles online about creating secure, memorable pass phrases but you're not on those sites right now so we're going to sum them up here. Good passwords are: 

  • hard to guess
  • long (at least 10 characters or more)
  • memorable

So how do you create a long, hard to guess password that you can actually remember? Let's start with some don'ts:

  1. Do not use your name, or your kids' names, or your pet's names, or your business name or anything related to you in your password. 
  2. Do not use days of the week, months of the year, seasons, or any kind of date in your password. 

And now the do's: 


  1. Combine at least two words together in the password - i.e. "close eagle"
  2. Make sure you include a combination of upper and lower case letters - i.e. "Cable Harvest"
  3. Add a string of numbers to your password - i.e. "Reflex Glacier 5823"
  4. Add a special symbol (! @ # $ % ^ & * ( ) _ - +) to your password - i.e. "% Model Local 8983"

Once you have a solid password like the examples in steps 3 and 4, change it periodically (once or twice per year) by adjusting the numeric portion or one of the words or the special symbol. You don't have to change the whole thing - as long as you have a solid base and change parts of it periodically, it will still provide good protection. After you choose your password, type it out 5-10 times to help burn it into your muscle memory because your fingers can sometimes remember it even if you can't speak it. And if you have a bunch of different passwords to remember, use a password management system like LastPass - http://lastpass.com -