New year, new passwords - why it's time for a spring clean of your logins

With Spring just around the corner, there’s no better time for a refresh to set yourself up for the rest of the year - but if you’re clearing out your wardrobe or cupboards, it could also be a great time to consider a spruce up of your security tools as well.

With new security threats emerging all the time, ensuring all your protection is up to scratch has never been more important - and what better place to start, than with your passwords.

We all know that having complex, hard-to-crack passwords using a strong mix of letters, numbers and special characters for each different account is vital for staying safe online, but remembering these details can often be tricky.

Hackers aren’t just going after multi-national companies when it comes to cyberattacks and data breaches any more - personal accounts often prove attractive, low-hanging fruit for targets, so it’s important you stay protected.

As mentioned, you can make sure your accounts stay safe by creating strong passwords, ideally around 12-16 characters, with a mix of uppercase letters, numbers and special characters or symbols.

Please, please, don’t pick anything too obvious or personal as passwords - scammers and hackers have become wise to these tactics over the years, so picking something easy to remember such as “123456” or even (god forbid) “password” is asking for trouble. This guidance even extends to areas such as favourite sports teams, TV shows or even family member names - as all this information can be easily gleaned from social media posts.

Admittedly, creating and remembering complex passwords can be tricky, so if you’re looking for a straightforward way to stay on top of your newly-created passwords, using a password manager service could be ideal, as it lets you keep track of all your login details and keeps all the information safe from hackers.

Think of a password manager as your secure vault for logins, offering a secure and reliable way to protect your accounts and the details needed to access them - as all it takes is for one password to be compromised for hackers to gain knowledge of all your other account logins.

Enabling Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is also a vital step to keeping your accounts and your passwords secure. Turning on MFA for all your critical accounts will effectively add a second layer of security, such as an authentication app or code, meaning you can be sure of safety, even if a password is stolen.

And remember that passwords across different platforms and devices will also need to be kept safe - it used to be that all security worries were centred around the humble PC, with nasty viruses and worms attacking only that one device - but the huge growth of smart products means you need to be sure that other devices are kept safe as well.

Smartphones and tablets often pack in as much (if not more) computing power than a desktop PC, but often they go unprotected against security threats, opening them up to attacks, so make sure your passwords on these devices are also as tough as can be.

So if you’re thinking things have got a bit stale when it comes to online security, maybe it’s time for a deep clean and spruce up of your passwords - it could be the best move you make this year.

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