Passwords - important security tools

Users are always telling us that they can't think of a good password to use.  In general strong passwords are: At least 8 characters long Have at mix of upper and lower case alpha characters Have at least one number and at least one symbol Can be remembered without writing it down The longer your password is, the larger the mix of numbers, symbols and characters, the better Use punctuation characters as well as symbols.

One way to do this is to use a pass-phrase and substitute "l33t 5p34k" or "Leet Speak" as the teenagers call it to substitute for the characters in at least some of the words.
Let's say your pass-phrase is:
I love playing paintball with all my friends!
Take the first characters of the words in the pass-phrase:
ILPPWAMF
Now let's do some substitution:
I1ppw@mf
We'll add in punctuation:
I1ppw@mf!
Ta da! You now have a password that Microsoft rates as a "strong" password. You have to remember the pass-phrase (I love playing paintball with all my friends!), to cap the first letter, and substitute a 1 for the L and and @ for the a. A mnemonic and substitution works great for building a password you can remember, and is still strong!

Another tactic I use is to have people encode a meaningful number - by just holding down the shift key as they type it  Let's say your password is going to be a relatives first and middle initial (John D. Rockefeller), followed by their birthday (8/8/39), and your age (29)
JD883929
becomes:
Jd**#(29
Has the first initial capped - second initial lower case.  Press and HOLD the shift key and type 8839 (turns into **#( but you don't have to remember that). and then lift your finger from the shift key and type the 29.  Again a strong password but easy to remember.

Try these out the next time you need to create a password - it should give you an easy to remember, as well as strong and useful password.  And check out the "password test links" on my Viruswarn.com site for more info on testing and building strong passwords.

Lee Drake