How Secure Is Your Password?

How secure is your password? We’ve all heard and seen the recommended best practices about setting your password, in particular rules to the effect of:

• A password should be 16 (at least 12) characters or more
• A password should include a combination of letters, numbers, and characters
• A password should have at least 1 uppercase character, 1 number and 1 special character
• A password shouldn’t be the word “password” or just the same letter or number repeated

As computing resources become more powerful and more easily accessible and password hacking scripts become more ubiquitous, anyone can crack a ‘simple’ password in no time. The following chart from security.org really drives this point home…