Six Security Resolutions for the New Year

These are easy things to do to better protect yourself.

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Six Security Resolutions for the New Year
Dec 30, 2011
By Paul Wagenseil

Another year, another 12 months of opportunity for hackers and cybercriminals to take advantage of many people's ignorance or passivity regarding computer security. Passwords will be cracked, computers will be hijacked and identities will be stolen.

But you don't have to be a victim. You can take charge of your own digital security by making the following six simple New Year's resolutions.

Credit: Dreamstime

Most people's passwords are terrible. They're based on names, birthdates, common words or common character strings, such as "1234" or "qwerty," and they're easy to guess and even easier to "brute-force" by running combination possibilities through a computer.

So upgrade your security and create a strong password by using a long word or phrase of at least eight characters that's not in the dictionary. Mix in capital letters, numbers and punctuation marks. (For example, "wassup dude" could become "wA55uPd00d3!")

See this previous topic, Top Hackable Passwords , for more suggestions on what not to use for a password!