The Change Your Password Day<\/em> was established in 2012 and has been celebrated annually since then. But what might\u2019ve seemed as a good idea back then is somewhat outdated in 2019. That\u2019s why we\u2019re proposing to change it to Strong Password Day<\/em>.<\/p>\n A decade ago, it used to be a common security practice to change passwords regularly. However, nowadays it\u2019s not considered to be effective. Why is that? Well, when it comes to passwords, there are actually two parts to the problem. First, passwords have to be hard to guess to effectively protect the account they are used for, and second passwords have to be easy to remember in order for us to use them. Whilst changing passwords regularly does have some<\/em> positive impact on the first part, it drastically complicates the second.<\/p>\n The problem really stems from the fact that we, as humans, don\u2019t like to remember long, complicated passwords \u2014 we\u2019re not machines. So, we do what comes naturally \u2014 we cheat. When we are forced to change a password, we make small changes in existing passwords, instead of creating a brand new one. To illustrate the point, let\u2019s take the password \u2018batman2018\u2019. Most of us, if asked to change this, would probably just change it to \u2018batman2019\u2019 \u2014 the system sees a different password, but technically it\u2019s the same and crucially, it wouldn\u2019t take a genius to guess the new password, if the old one had been compromised.<\/p>\n TL;DR: Changing passwords regularly doesn\u2019t really work. It\u2019s a much better idea to use strong and, even more importantly, unique<\/em> passwords. Now, let\u2019s talk a little bit about uniqueness.<\/p>\n It may seem like a good idea to come up with one really strong password and use it for all your accounts, this way the accounts are well protected and it\u2019s quite easy to remember just one password, even if it\u2019s a complex one \u2014 win-win, right? In a perfect world, this would be true. Unfortunately, we don\u2019t live in a perfect world, and sadly data leaks happen regularly and passwords get compromised. If you are using the same password for all accounts, just one leak means that all your accounts could be compromised<\/a>. In other words, it\u2019s not a two-birds-with-one-stone situation, but rather an all-eggs-in-one-basket one.<\/p>\n What should a password look like in order for it to be considered \u2018strong\u2019? The answer is a bit complicated (think math), but in a nutshell it all comes to just two properties. The first one is a set of characters that are used in a password: diversity makes passwords less predictive and therefore stronger. And the second one is length: the longer, the better.<\/p>\n The good news is that these properties compensate for each other: if you are struggling to remember all the \u201c#, % and &\u201d stuff, you can simply make your password several characters longer instead.<\/p>\n One more thing: a strong password doesn\u2019t have to be random. I mean, randomness is nice for security, but it\u2019s a hell of a pain to remember random passwords. Again, you can compensate with length \u2014 make your passwords at the very least a dozen characters long, preferably even longer.<\/p>\n With that said, remembering strong and unique passwords can be much easier than you think. You just need to know how to do it right. Our Global Research and Analysis Team member David Jacoby explains it in layman\u2019s terms we can all understand \u2014 he even gives you a good example on how to come up with your own \u2018password system\u2019, which will make forgetting passwords a thing of the past. Read this post<\/a> or watch the video<\/a>.<\/p>\n And finally, here are two more tips which should help you lock-down your accounts even further: first, enable two-factor authentication<\/a> for all your accounts, second, use a password manager<\/a> as a backup plan.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Changing passwords regularly is outdated. Use strong and unique passwords that are easy to remember instead. Here\u2019s how to make them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":421,"featured_media":15294,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[1111,2990,584,405,187,529,131],"class_list":{"0":"post-15291","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tips","8":"tag-2fa","9":"tag-digital-comfort-zone","10":"tag-great","11":"tag-password-manager","12":"tag-passwords","13":"tag-threats","14":"tag-tips"},"hreflang":[{"hreflang":"en-gb","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/strong-password-day\/15291\/"},{"hreflang":"en-in","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.in\/blog\/strong-password-day\/15175\/"},{"hreflang":"en-ae","url":"https:\/\/me-en.kaspersky.com\/blog\/strong-password-day\/12752\/"},{"hreflang":"en-us","url":"https:\/\/usa.kaspersky.com\/blog\/strong-password-day\/17094\/"},{"hreflang":"es-mx","url":"https:\/\/latam.kaspersky.com\/blog\/strong-password-day\/14015\/"},{"hreflang":"es","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.es\/blog\/strong-password-day\/17800\/"},{"hreflang":"it","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.it\/blog\/strong-password-day\/16871\/"},{"hreflang":"tr","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.tr\/blog\/strong-password-day\/5640\/"},{"hreflang":"x-default","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/strong-password-day\/25519\/"},{"hreflang":"fr","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.fr\/blog\/strong-password-day\/14735\/"},{"hreflang":"pt-br","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.br\/blog\/strong-password-day\/11398\/"},{"hreflang":"de","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.de\/blog\/strong-password-day\/18498\/"},{"hreflang":"ja","url":"https:\/\/blog.kaspersky.co.jp\/strong-password-day\/22370\/"},{"hreflang":"nl","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.nl\/blog\/strong-password-day\/23819\/"},{"hreflang":"en-au","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com.au\/blog\/strong-password-day\/22061\/"},{"hreflang":"en-za","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.za\/blog\/strong-password-day\/21994\/"}],"acf":[],"banners":"","maintag":{"url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/tag\/passwords\/","name":"passwords"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/421"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15291"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21067,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15291\/revisions\/21067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Changing passwords regularly doesn\u2019t help<\/h2>\n
Why passwords have to be unique<\/h3>\n
What makes a strong password<\/h3>\n
Strong and unique passwords that are easy to remember<\/h3>\n