Guidelines for Selecting a Good Password

The Aim:

The goal is to select something easily remembered but not easily guessed.

Length:

Windows systems: seven characters or longer

UNIX, Linux systems: eight characters or longer

Composition of Password:

Mixture of alphabetic, numeric, and special characters (e.g., #, @, or !)

Mixture of upper and lower case characters

No words found in a dictionary

No personal information about the user (e.g., any part of the user’s name, a family member’s name, or the user, date of birth, Social Security number, phone number, license plate number etc.).

No information that is easily obtained about the user, especially any part of the user ID

No commonly used proper names such as local sports teams or celebrities.

No patterns such as 12345, sssss, or qwerty.

Try misspelling or abbreviating a word that has some meaning to the user (Example: “How to select a good password?” becomes “H2sagP?”).

So by doing this, you at least prevent your password from easily guessed or hacked.