In today's era, it is crucial to ensure the security of all accounts you have created. Having a strong and secure password is essential for your protection, this applies to all accounts that you may own, if they require a password, ensure its a strong one.
According to Exploding Topics, a cyberattack happens about every 39 seconds, more than 800,000 people fall victim to cyber attacks each year (Exploding Topics, 2024). A large portion of these attacks, about one third, are phishing attacks. Another common attack method is brute force attacks.

How to Make a Strong Password
To make a strong password, you will want to ensure the password is complex with many characters. Longer passwords are more secure, your password should not be short.
Keep passwords above 8 characters
Include a variety of different character types, such as upper case, lower case, symbols and numbers.
Avoid patterns such as 2468, or abcd.
avoid personal information, such as your birthdate or name
In truth passwords are becoming outdated, as there are now software that can make thousands of guesses a second to hack into accounts. Passphrases are more secure for accounts.
A passphrase is simply a series of words used to create a password. There are a couple of ways to do this. One method is a sentence structure. Let's take a variety of words and put them together, such as: Apple, Car, Key, Device, House. Putting these together creates a significantly longer password that is 22 characters long, making it much more difficult for a program to guess.
There is however a much more secure way that is recommended. Just as before, create a sentence, about anything. It can be something you like, and should be a sentence you can remember.
For example: "I just ran to the store and now I own two new houses forever."
Using the first letter of each word forms the password, "Ijrttsanotnhf". This password is much more complex and hard to guess, however it is easy to remember because of the sentence.
This password can now be refined. Replace certain characters in the password with similar symbols and numbers.
a = @
two = 2
for = 4
s = $
Now that we have an idea of which characters will be replaced, we can also choose to capitalize some of the letters. For simplicity, we can choose the first and last letters, as well as a random letter in the middle.
Now it would look like this "Ijrtt$@niO2h4E"
Note: forever was split to "for ever".
This is a complex-looking password that many people would not remember even if they have seen it. Because of the idea of using a sentence structure, it will be easier for you to remember.
More Protection
Having a strong password is sometimes not enough; you will need to take extra precautions for absolute security.
Many services have security settings you can enable by looking in the settings. These can typically be found under a security setting such as Settings > Security & Privacy. You will want to look for a setting called MFA (Multi-Factor Authentication) or 2FA (2-Factor Authentication). Enabling these will make a second step required to log in. This could be either a text message to your phone with a one-time-use passcode or a generated code from another app.
Safe security habits are the top of the list for importance. Understanding how to many people online become victims of phishing and how to avoid it is important.
Extra security tools such as a VPN may also help protect your privacy. VPNs encrypted traffic and hide sensitive data as you send them across the internet.
Do Not Reuse Passwords
It is a very common issue that many people online reuse passwords. The reason why this is an issue is because of the security of websites you visit or make an account with. If you make an account with 40 websites, and they use the same password one website may be breached exposing all their users. This includes your password for that website. Attacks may then use your email and password on every other website and gain access to all accounts you own. This is called "Credential Stuffing"
Each website must have a unique password, otherwise it puts every account you share a password with at risk.
To solve this, use a password manager. There are many password managers available. Google has its own password manager installed in Chrome. Apple has a very secure password manager capable of use, as well as a password generator. This makes it easy to keep track of all complex passwords safely. The only password you will need to remember is the one you created for the main account controlling all passwords, such as your Google account or iCloud account.
References
Howarth, J. (2024, July 8). 120+ cybersecurity stats: Data, trends & predictions (2024). Exploding Topics. https://explodingtopics.com/blog/cybersecurity-stats
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