How to Create Easy, Memorable, and Secure Passwords

Since so much of our personal information is now online, it is crucial to create secure, but memorable, passwords. It's also important to teach our students how to protect their online information with a strong password. The best passwords have 8 or more characters, at least one number, and both upper and lower case letters. This can be a challenge, but here is an easy way to create a perfect password!

First, choose a favorite song lyric to turn into the password. For example, if you took the song lyric, "Mary had a little lamb, its fleece was white as snow," you would take the first letter of each word, and you would have "Mhallifwwas." Of course, you need to add at least one number, so in this case I would turn the first "l" into a "1" and voila! a strong, secure, unguessable password that is easy for you to recall: "Mha1lifwwas." Remember, there is no need to write this down, so the password stays only in your head. For a password hint, you can just use the first word, or the artist's name, and that will remind you of the lyric and the password. 

Let me know if you have any other password tricks!