Strong Email Passwords Protect Your Business

Your email account almost certainly contains some sensitive information that you need to protect. Your banking account numbers and statements, healthcare information, personal and professional information could all potentially be exposed if someone were to gain access to your account. This means you need to make every possible effort to protect your email, including having strong email passwords.

Here are a few tips to strengthen your passwords and increase your email security:

• Have a longer password: The longer your password, the more difficult it will be to crack. The standard is to have at least an eight character password, but you might consider using 12 characters or longer to be on the safe side. If you find having a longer password makes it difficult to memorize, keep a record of your passwords either on a slip of paper in a secure place or in a secured file on your computer.

• Avoid names, places or words: There are a number of “bruteforce” password cracking tools that will first jam the email entry field with as many of these names, places and dictionary words as possible in a short amount of time, hoping to have an easy time getting into the account. 

• Avoid passwords with personal meaning: Never use any passwords that have some sort of personal meaning to you, as anyone who knows you could potentially guess them. For example, using initials, anniversary or birthday dates, names of children or loved ones, places that are special to you or words related to any of your hobbies or interests will always be a bad practice. 

• Vary the characters you use: The strongest passwords are those that contain variations of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, punctuation and other special characters without any discernible patterns.

• Consider common methods for strong passwords: Having pneumonic devices to remember a progression of letters and numbers can help, as can using passwords based on phonetic muscle memory, the Electrum method or Bruce Schneier’s method.

At IDMI.Net, we want to provide you with the best, most secure email service possible, but the best way for you to help yourself is by developing a strong password. For more tips and information, contact our team today.