How To Conduct A Simple Password Test

Following a recent study by Bloomberg Businessweek, the importance of creating strong and memorable passwords for online accounts has again been brought to attention. With more and more people relying on the Internet to store and access increasingly private information, many wonder how to know if their passwords are safe. As a result, this post presents a summary of the above study as the basis of a simple and quick test that would reveal whether or not your password is strong enough.

Time it takes a hacker’s computer to randomly guess your password:

VERY WEAK PASSWORD

Length: 6 characters
Lowercase: 10 minutes
+ Uppercase: 10 hours
+ Nos. & Symbols: 18 days

WEAK PASSWORD

Length: 7 characters
Lowercase: 4 hours
+ Uppercase: 23 days
+ Nos. & Symbols: 4 years

STRONG PASSWORD

Length: 8 characters
Lowercase: 4 days
+ Uppercase: 3 years
+ Nos. & Symbols: 463 years

VERY STRONG PASSWORD

Length: 9 characters
Lowercase: 4 months
+ Uppercase: 178 years
+ Nos. & Symbols: 44,530 years

Data: Gartner, Forrester, Duo Security, Imperva, LastBit Software as collated by Bloomberg Businessweek

Overall, it is not only the length that matters but also the right combination of lower-case and upper-case characters, numbers and symbols. If all of this is present, you will definitely stand a better chance of making it more difficult for hackers to crack your password.

Talking Point

Do you know any other way to check the strength of a password?