While many of us are enjoying the convenience that online services bring to our lives, we have all probably struggled at some point to remember the numerous passwords we now need to manage and update.
But it’s a minor inconvenience for the security they provide us.
To help you improve your online security, our experts in our Information Security team have shared their insight into what makes a good password, and why we should keep them up to date.
Update your passwords to passphrases of 15 characters or more - this will disrupt most password crackers. At that length, with a good mixture of varying styles of characters, it would take years for most brute force applications to crack a password.
| Length of password (chars) | Only numbers | Mixed lower and upper case letters | Mixed numbers, lower and upper case letters | Mixed numbers, lower and upper case letters, symbols |
| 3 | Instantly | Instantly | Instantly | Instantly |
| 4 | Instantly | Instantly | Instantly | Instantly |
| 5 | Instantly | Instantly | 3 secs | 10 secs |
| 6 | Instantly | 8 secs | 3 mins | 13 mins |
| 7 | Instantly | 5 mins | 3 hours | 17 hours |
| 8 | Instantly | 3 hours | 10 days | 57 days |
| 9 | 4 secs | 4 days | 153 days | 12 years |
| 10 | 40 secs | 169 days | 1 year | 928 years |
| 11 | 6 mins | 16 years | 106 years | 71k years |
| 12 | 1 hour | 600 years | 6k years | 5m years |
| 13 | 11 hours | 21k years | 108k years | 423m years |
| 14 | 4 days | 778k years | 25m years | 5bn years |
| 15 | 46 days | 28m years | 1bn years | 2tn years |
| 16 | 1 year | 1bn years | 97bn years | 193tn years |
| 17 | 12 years | 36bn years | 6tn years | 14qd years |
| 18 | 126 years | 1tn years | 374tn years | 1qt years |
K=thousand (1000)
m=million (1,000,000)
bn=billion (1,000,000,000)
tn=trillion (1,000,000,000,000)
qd=quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000)
qt=quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000)
Source: How Long Will It Take To Hack Your Password? – Frank on Fraud
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