See why you must password your computer

A Password is a secret code or key issued to the computer to be able to identify you and grant you access.

Keeping away unwanted access to your computer and its files is always a critical requirement for maintaining a safe computer.

Unfortunately, many people own computers but very few take seriously the issue of password maintenance practices.

A password is like a key to your apartment. If you go out of your home without locking the door, be sure any illegal person with the intention of invading your residence will do that effortlessly and without resistance.

And after locking your house, if you misplace the key, you will have to stay outside if you cannot provide the exact key or spare.

Password comes in different levels.  The very first level of password implementation is at the operating system level (windows, Mac, Linux etc.).

Beyond that level, system setup can as well be secured with a password before we proceed to the various applications resident in the system.



Maintaining good password practices help to secure your computer and its files.

Many people all over the world have lost fortunes to carelessness in terms of password habits, organisations are not exempted.

Healthy Password Habits

There are some principal habits we must imbibed to ensure our computer systems are well secure and protected from unwanted access.

1. Set password strength

Password strength entails the complexity of the password. The more complex a password is, the lesser the chance of the system been hacked.

Strong passwords are very complex in nature. Weak passwords are often simple passcodes that can easily be guessed.

According to Symantec.com, the following are the first 500 worst passwords of all time (table Credit- Symantec). These passwords can be easily guessed and gotten correctly by hackers. You may avoid them.

Therefore, if you are in the habit of issuing simple non-complex passwords like any of the ones above, just know that you can easily be hacked be it on your computer at home or on your online platforms.

But complex passwords are a combination of  alphanumeric and string characters.

Combination of alphabets e.g  xti, numbers example 173, special characters like #,)&+. gives more  difficulty to your potential hacker to access your computer.

Example of a complex password can be something of this nature  zwe+=yx75xe*pto

Although, it is generally believed that it is safer not to put your computer on the network as there is no perfect solution to hacking anywhere in the world, however  a password such as this zwe+=yx75xe*pto can hardly be guessed.

Beyond all this, computer security experts declare that passwords derived from 6 different diceware words (e.g nikko puma high harm shake jazzy) will extremely difficult to guess.

1. Set password expiration

Password expiration is the facility that allows password to expire thereby ensuring change is made from time to time.

Most regulatory standards recommend between 30 to 90 days for expiration duration.

This means for instance your windows password has been either set to expire after 30 days or 60 or 90 days as the case maybe.

You can actually turn on and off the feature in most operating systems like windows. While in applications it depends on the requirements given to the developer.

But it is a very good practice to include such strict password features in every application to be developed.

2. Set account lockout number of attempts

In most operating systems like windows, there is a facility for restricting login attempts, as well the feature can be enabled on the system.

This feature ensures that a user is locked out permanently should the person make wrong login attempts up to a certain number of times e.g. 3 times.

This will help to guide against incessant login attempts by which hackers often employ to guess your password.

3. Secure your password

Do not expose your password to anyone. It is better you memorise it instead of writing it in your diary, mobile phone or jotter.

This is because chances are that you can lose any of those items into some unsafe hands. It is also not a healthy culture to store passwords on your computer system.

4. Encrypt your passwords

For all software stored, there is the need to encrypt them to ensure they are not kept in an easily readable format.
This ensures that unwanted access is not granted to systems, solution and databases.

As you engage in all these healthy password habits, I am sure you will enjoy some safety using your computer without been hacked easily.