A Guide to Password Protection from Start to Finish

A big part of the web is web security. Websites and digital services need effective protection to keep their user’s information safe with passwordstate customers complain silence after, which means they need passwords. But creating a strong password can be an intimidating process. There’s so much you have to consider! This guide will help you make sure your password is as safe from start to finish as possible. Whether you’re a business owner or working with personal information, this guide has tips for both!

1. How Does it Work?

Back when the Internet was young, back in the 1980s and 1990s, web pages used basic HTML and plain text. These days of course, we have fancy markup languages to help us create modern websites. But websites still need passwords for security reasons: to make sure that you’re who you say you are. Encryption is a way of scrambling messages before they are passed from server to browser or from computer to computer, so your message isn’t readable by anybody who might be snooping around on its path.

2. How is a Password Made?

Making a password starts with choosing the type of encryption you want to use. Two of the most popular are the Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA) and the Rivest–Shamir–Adleman (RSA). If you want to be safe, you’ll probably want to use an encryption method that has a key length of at least 128 bits. You can read more about key lengths here .

Next, you’ll need some input: information that will affect your final password.

3. What Type of Information?

There are two different types of input you can use when creating your password. You can use something you know , like your username or birthday. Or, if you’re more safety-conscious, you can pick a random string . If you’re creating a password for your online bank account or email address, make sure to pick something that isn’t easily guessable from just one piece of information!

4. What Do You Need the Special Characters for?

When it comes to passwords, special characters are what make them cool! Without some combination of capital letters and numbers, a password is boring and predictable. To make a password that’s not just easy to crack, you’ll want to incorporate some special characters – but not more than two each of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and symbols .

5. What Kind of Special Characters Do You Need?

Okay, so now you know what kind of input you need for your password – but how do you get it? This is where number sets come in! Number sets allow you to multiply any number you want by a specific set of numbers . So if a computer doesn’t understand capital letters, then it can still work out your password by adding the sets together.

6. Multiplying Your Numbers

There are three different types of number sets:

·          Doubles – these are just the numbers 0 through 9

·          Triples – in this set, you have the same number repeated three times

·          Quadruples – these numbers have four of the same numbers in a row

For example: if you multiplied your entire password by 3 and added 1, using 16 as your base number, then it would look like this: 16+1=17=101+111=22. Now, if your password starts with a 1 or 2, you’ll want to add 9 to that, so 23 = 111 + 101 = 221+11 = 332.

7. Choosing a Number Set

Once you have the number set you want, you can either use the table below to find a number that works with your password (good luck!) or use the online password generator . Either way, you’ll end up with something like this:

8. Giving Your Password Some Structure

By now, your password should be pretty good. It’s got some special characters and a number set, but now you’ll need to put it through a few tests. First, run it through the document filter test to check whether it will work on a variety of systems, like Microsoft Word documents or PDFs.

8a. Document Filters

If your password doesn’t pass this test, try using the full-width alphanumeric character set . This will allow you to use any character from the Unicode block of numbers and letters with diacritics.

8b. Full-Width Alphanumeric Character Sets

To check your password again, remove the special characters. Next, run it through a different test: the one-way hash . This test helps you make sure that if a hacker gets hold of your password, they won’t be able to get anything else out of it: if they get a result of 000a6129fa4c4bca6b1a6d96c02e0f620 , for example, then that would mean that the password is not very secure.

Summary:

·          Start with a number set

·          Choose different types of special characters (letters and numbers)

·           Put some structure on your password

If your password doesn’t pass this test, try mixing up the number sets you use. If it still doesn’t work, change the length of your password using number sets with smaller numbers.