- Community >
- Announcements >
- It’s Cyber Security Awareness Week
It’s Cyber Security Awareness Week
This week is New Zealand's first official Cyber Security Awareness Week, which means it's a great time to improve your online security.
Password security is important to get right, but it’s one area not many people do well in. The good news is that it’s easy to improve, so here are a few tips to help keep your passwords secure:
Do's
- Length - use eight or more characters
- Complexity – Include upper and lower case letters, numbers, symbols and so on
- Variation – Change your passwords every few months
- Variety – Use a different password for each account (if one account is compromised you won’t lose them all)
Dont's
- Use dictionary words, proper nouns or foreign words
- Use sequential or repeated characters (e.g. 123456, 888, abcd, qwerty)
- Use personal information (e.g. date of birth, credit card PIN, a family member or pet name, phone number…)
- Give your password to anyone, friend or foe (for more on phishing and other online scams, see here)
You can check the security of your password here.
The team at NetSafe have also put together some advice to help you keep safe online. Check it out here.
So how secure is your password? Join our discussion here.