Creating a Smarter Password
Your CCS Network password doesn’t only give you access to Blackboard and and your campus email, it also grants you access to personal information associated with your college records. It is vital you protect your password so your personal information remains safe.
Consider the following when creating your new CCS password…
Don’t use Personal Identifiable Information (PII) in your password such as:
- Name
- User name
- Birthday
- Pet’s name
- Child’s name
- Alma mater
- Hobby keyword
Change your most critical passwords every six months.
Don’t use the same password for online banking that you use for social networking or email.
Never give your password to someone over the phone.
Don’t use any single word that can be found in the dictionary as your full password.
Try to create passwords with at least eight alphabetic characters but less than thirty five characters long.
Longer passwords are harder to hack. Consider a longer password to help protect your private information. Use common but unrelated words to form a string. (‘dapper’ + ‘kitten’ = ‘dapperkitten’)
Mix the case of your characters.
Many passwords are case sensitive. Try adding in one or two upper case letters when possible. (‘Dapperkitten’)
Try to use special characters such as non-alphabetic characters.
Punctuation is a good way to add protection to your passwords as well as a little length. If possible add a period or exclamation mark in the password. (‘D@pperkitten!’)
Consider the following special characters
! ” # $ % & ‘ ( ) * + , – . : ; < = > ? @ [ ] ^ _ ` { } ~
Try substituting vowels for numbers to create a unique password.
Numbers are frequently used in password creation. Adding in these special characters will greatly increase the difficulty of discovering your password. Remember, avoid using your birth date if you are amending your password with numbers. (‘D4pp3rk1tt3n!’)
Try starting with a phrase and just taking the first letter and adding punctuation and casing as desired.
For example: ‘I can’t wait for football season to start’ becomes ‘icwffsts’ which could easily become ‘icwfFsts!!:-)’ or something similar.
Not feeling creative enough? Do a web search for a password generator. www.newpasswordgenerator.com or www.pctools.com/guides/password/ are basic password generator sites that allows you to enter simple parameters to build a strong password.