Ditch your dodgy old passwords

Pittsburg: Most of the classic New Year resolutions revolve around improving your health and lifestyle. But this year, why not consider cleaning up your passwords too? It’s better to start with a word or two that isn’t so common, and make sure you mix things up with symbols and special characters in the middle.

For example, “wincing giraffe” could be adapted to “W1nc1ng_!G1raff3” These secure passwords can be harder to remember, to the extent you might end up having to write them down. That’s OK, as long as you keep the note somewhere secure (and definitely not stuck to your monitor).

Even if you write them down in a book (kept safely locked away) you will significantly reduce your risk in the event of a data breach on any of those platforms.This doesn’t expose your password to greater risk, because the password itself is not shared.

Adopting a better approach to passwords is a simple way to reduce your cyber-security risks. Ideally that means using a password manager, but if you’re not quite ready for that yet, at least make 2022 the year you ditch the sticky notes and pets’ names.