Strong Passwords That are Easy to Remember, Hard to Crack

Passwords are easily the weakest link your security. When you use cloud computing, passwords may be the ONLY security you have.  If you make your passwords too short and easy, then they are easy to guess and hack. If you make them too long and difficult, they will be hard to hack but hard for you to remember, too.

An easy way to make a strong password is to use a passphrase instead.

For example, the password "kitten" can be cracked almost instantly because it is a common dictionary word.  But the password "Kitten3921" will take about 10 days to hack which is better but feasible for a determined hacker with automated resources.

But the passphrase "My-black-kitten" will take 311 billion years to hack because it is hard to guess, is long (18-characters) and uses complex characters (capitals and special characters). But it has the advantage of being easy to remember. You can use your own custom variation like spaces, asterisks, ampersands, numbers, etc. as a spacers between words.

The key to an password protection is making your password so difficult that the hacker would have to expend extraordinary resources to crack it.  If the hacker needs to spend too much money, computing power he is most likely to move on to an easier target.