While passwords can seem restrictive and difficult, ensuring you have secure passwords is important. You may not think you have any information you want to protect, but look closer look. Do you share passwords between systems? Is your banking login the same as Facebook and your email?

Does this sound like you?

Does your email may contains sensitive information? Maybe login details for other online systems are saved there. If someone had access to your email, they could use the forgot password button on a website and new login details are sent through to your email in minutes.

What about systems like Facebook or Instagram? You may not have sensitive information on these systems, but someone posing as you could certainly cause damage to your reputation by posting as you? Even data like photos posted to your Apple iCloud or Google Drive could be damaging, even if it was simply deleted one day without notice.

Do you have all this information linked your mobile phone accessible with a single swipe?

Consider your office login. You probably have access to more sensitive information than you know. Similarly if someone had your password, could they email your boss some unfriendly words without even being onsite. In our office that’s described as a CLM - Career Limiting Move.

While being frustrating at times, make sure you setup any system to enforce strong passwords. With a mix of upper lower case, and numbers as well as being able to include special (#+-*) characters. A longer password increases the time it take to crack. A 12 character minimum ensures your password will be changed again before all but the largest computers can crack it.

Some simple ideas for creating passwords:

• Use phrases i.e. SeeJohnRun23 ILovePasswords54
• Use place names such as your next holiday destination
• Pick something you see every day in the office.
• Choose two random words and separate them with a number i.e. Februray1Hot