Choosing a strong password

Email is extremely convenient and today it has become the primary means of communication in our professional and even personal lives. We all have become greatly dependant on it. Some send and receive up to few hundreds emails per day and most of us don’t even notice how much we depend on our email until the computer crashes or we lose internet connectivity. Most organizations can’t operate without email even for an hour so having a reliable email infrastructure and connectivity is absolutely critical for any business. Organizations spend enormous amounts of money on network and server redundancy however what most people don't realize is that email service disruptions can also be caused by weak email passwords and will generally have a much greater negative impact on your organization than connectivity loss or mail server downtime.

Having a weak password can cause downtime and losses in revenue.

Do you want a competitor to read your confidential emails or send emails to other parties such as your vendors on your behalf without your knowledge? Probably not! Or imagine this scenario: A spammer guesses your password and uses your account to deliver millions of spam emails worldwide. Before you know it, your email address or the whole company mail server gets black-listed and none of your customers are able to receive your email. It could be days before your domain will be while-listed again. Not a good situation to be in! Think about it, a single user in your organization with a weak password such as “flower” or “password” can cause major losses in revenue.

Choosing a strong password is a compromise between security and comfort.

Having a strong password is a compromise between security and comfort, however it is possible to have a strong password that is easy to remember. Here is how. Start with a basic sentence by choosing two or more meaningful words. Choose a word phrase that says something about you (easier for you to remember). This phrase might reflect your hobby interests or a personal passion of yours. It could also be your favorite food, song, or a band name. While at it, insert some numbers that have some significance to you such as your birthday. Then capitalize few letters in the sentence.

Here is the summary:

• Don’t use any part of your username in your new password
• Ensure that your password at least 8 characters long
• Choose a sentence rather than a word
• Capitalize at least 2-3 letters in your sentence
• Insert few numbers in between the words

And here are few examples:

• Love05DoGs80
• suMMer75tiMe03
• FAsT78CAmAro1