Seems most of my posts here are about security but it’s a while since I’ve nagged about passwords so here goes..
All your passwords are important. However, your Office365 one more so as if it is compromised it’s possible someone could be into all your emails, your documents and the whole of your Office365 infrastructure which could be devastating.
I’m not going to go into detail on how to choose a secure password as there are plenty of good resources on that but I will put a couple of links at the bottom of this post.
We often set a temporary password for people. This can be “Password1$” or “Change$Me”. As you can see, they’re on this web page for everyone to see but that doesn’t matter as they’re temporary and nobody is still using either of those……are you? We’ll use something different from now on but it’ll still be temporary.
Managing passwords can be a PIA. It is for us too so we do empathise. Try a secure password manager program, they work well. We used to say not to write your passwords down but let’s admit that may be necessary these days. Better a small notebook of recorded passwords that you keep safe than the same, easy to guess password used on lots of services.
Here are a few bullet points on things you should NOT be considering:
- Something simple so I can remember it
- My kid’s name and birthday
- The same password I used for something else
- Using the number 5 for an “S”, the number 3 for and “E” and so on. No more secure than using the original letters these days.
- You company name or anything else everybody connects you with
For password managers, we use Roboform at Lorica and have done for years. I’ve also heard good things about Dashlane. Try one using a few passwords and sites that aren’t too important to you and see how you get on.
https://www.howtogeek.com/195430/how-to-create-a-strong-password-and-remember-it/
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/safety/pc-security/protect-passwords.aspx