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The need
The idea
Passwords
Pass phrases
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The need
What should be used to formulate a password?
Any common Internet or e-mail user should know about the need for and the importance of passwords.
Everyone has to make that difficult choice of formulating the right password.
Furthermore every system administrator and every company has to generate a great number of passwords to ensure that their IT resources are accessed only by authorized users. This aspect of access control is a part of IT security and must be included in any password policy.
A well known current recommendation is that a password should be at least 8 characters long and composed of any of the 72 symbols easily entered with a keyboard and that it should be changed at least every month depending on your specific needs.
Those symbols are:
- any uppercase letter, A to Z (26);
- any lowercase letter, a to z (26);
- any number, 0 to 9 (10);
- and any special characters attached to the numeric keys, i.e., !, @, #, $, %, ^, &, *, (, ) (10).
The total number of combinations formulated in this manner is:
72 ^ 8 = 722.204.136.308.736, which is a little under 723 trillion possibilities.
A final important point in password management is that no password should be written down, as it could become easily accessible and stolen.
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