We often talk about backups and how important they are. We have emphasized that it is vital to make sure that our data is safe and secured, available for immediate restoration and disaster recovery. We’ve covered the issue of the affordable JetBackup license pricing and it’s ease of use.

 

At this point I’d like to talk about something we all use daily – passwords. When people hear that I am from the hosting industry the most common question I hear is: “How do you keep websites safe?”. Surely there is no 100% guarantee of safety when you are online, but there are some things we all can do to reduce the chances of being hacked. The first thing would be a strong password.

 

Every Password is breakable when given enough time and CPU power. But hackers will try to break the easiest passwords first. A hacker will try millions and even billions of attempts to break a password using an encrypted hash, which can be easily stolen from vulnerable systems.

 

Use these rules of thumb for STRONG password creation:

 

1) Use the Maximum Possible Characters your System Allows.
Every system/device allows a maximum amount of characters in your password creation, use them all. The longer the password the longer it takes to crack it.

 

2) Dictionary Words are a Bad Idea.
Word combinations are easy to be tested against given dictionary attack. It doesn’t really help “hiding” dictionary words with numbers or special characters. Combined usage of hacking tools can pick these words up.

 

3) Use Different Character Types.
Slow the hacker down. Make him give up and chase the easier catch by using at least one character of each character type: lowercase letters, uppercase letters, numbers and special characters.

 

3) Change your Password Frequently.
The more sensitive the data, the more frequent you need to change your password. Hacked passwords are sold around the world and are not always in immediate usage.

 

4) Each Account has a Different Password.
If by any chance your password was hacked, you surely don’t want ALL of your online accounts to be compromised from that one password.

5) Never Ever Save Your Passwords In One Place.
Based on data sensitivity you should keep your passwords list separated at all times. Just make sure you remember your master password if you use encrypted tools, which should reside offline.

 

Check out these cool tools that I personally use:

 

Check how long it takes to hack your password:
http://random-ize.com/how-long-to-hack-pass/
Use it to check your existing one and also the new one you’ll create later on.

 

Generate random passwords:
https://passwordsgenerator.net/
Use the rules mentioned above and go wild with it

 

Check how strong your is password:
http://www.passwordmeter.com/
Use it to double check yourself and have fun.

 

By following the above security tips you may find yourself doing a lot less website restores… at least restores that were caused by poor security 😉