The basic concept has always been simple. It has never changed. You’ve heard it countless times from your mother growing up; and perhaps even a spouse or friend. The concept? Stay safe.

Most people don’t walk around with their credit card taped to their shirt like a “Hello, my name is” sticker. So, why do so many people seem to wear their passwords for the public to see?

The majority of security measures require the password owner to be responsible and intelligent. A password is only as secure as it’s owner. We’re all familiar with the security measure that requires you to change your password every set number of days while also restricting you to new passwords only. Many owners will see this and their password complexity will regress because of it; effectively eliminating the reason for this measure. Instead of probing their brains for a logical course of ever-changing strong passwords, many will choose a password like “amy1″. Once they’re forced to recreate their password, all they could come up with is “amy12″.

This basically voids the reasoning behind changing your password. The strongest passwords are random; utilizing upper and lowercase characters, special characters, and numbers. Strong passwords can contain a word, but they’ll be stronger if they do not. Passwords also should be long. So, how could you create a ever-changing secure password using the criteria above?

Many have turned to substituting alphabetical characters for special characters or numbers. This is known as “leet speak”, or “1337 speak”. If you’ll notice from “1337″, the one (1) is replacing an L, the three’s (3) are a backwards E and the seven (7) is basically a T. There is no definitive way of accomplishing “leet speak”, so any combination of special characters and numbers to recreate traditional characters is open.

I personally would go one step farther in creating unique memorable passwords that have the ability to change. Like many people, I have trouble remembering a persons name. To commit a persons name to memory, quite often, I need to look deeper than just a name. I seek out and apply a memorable reference to the name. Recently I met a couple named Joe and Sharon. Before our introduction, I said their names like the old movie Tarzan: “Me Tarzan, You Jane”, or “Me Joe, You Sharon”. This has allowed me to remember their names, as I often think of Tarzan before arriving at their residence now. This same thought process could be applied directly to passwords. If I needed to make an infinite amount of passwords for something related to these two people, I could use anything from the movies or books of Tarzan. Each new password could contain any vague reference that I will remember because of it’s relation to Tarzan.

This is all well and good, however, all of the password security in the world cannot physically shut a persons mouth. The biggest culprit in password theft, or cracking, comes from a person being verbally cavalier with their passwords. When in meetings with clients, or out with friends, people will often just yell it out so they aren’t bothered with typing. If you need to give out your password to anyone for a short amount of time, do not give them your current password. If you have the ability to change your password freely, change it temporarily to a shared password. Once the third party has finished using this password, quickly change it back to your secret secured password.

Can’t thing of a good secure password? Are you still having trouble remembering your passwords? Do you have too many to remember? There is help out there. Many free, online and offline, applications are available to help you stay safe:

Good Password: Good Password is a great site for generating strong passwords. By default, the “Random Password” generator is already setup to use upper/lowercase letters and numbers at 12 characters long. You can add special characters with one click of the “(.?:;!,)” checkbox.

Note: “Leet Speak” has been around for quite a while. Without going into too much detail, this password generator will take what you have written in the field and convert it to the same word. There is no definitive way to accomplish this, so other translators may be different. (e.g. Password = p4$$w0rd)

RoboForm2Go: There are quite a few products out there that will help solve the location dilemma. RoboForm2Go has a free version to get you started. It provides plug and play support, ties into popular browsers, gives you options to encrypt your passwords, and even saves non-form passwords such as Unix terminal passwords.

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