In today’s digital world, the use of strong passwords is essential to ensuring the security of your online accounts and private information. Keeping track of the multiple unique usernames and passwords necessary to access dozens of online accounts has become a challenging task. Many of us record passwords on post-it notes or use the same password for multiple online services. Unfortunately, the more places a password is used or written down, the more likely you are to get hacked.
Information theft is among the “fastest rising consequences of cyber security crime to date,” according to the 2018 study commissioned by Accenture Security. You might wonder how it’s possible for threat actors to “guess” their way into your private account. The reality is, people are not doing the heavy lifting for hacking passwords and stealing our information, computers are. Computers automate the hacking process and can produce thousands of guesses per second. This means the technique of replacing letters with symbols in one’s password may only take the computer a few extra seconds to crack while making it significantly harder for the user to remember.
