Best Practices for Password Protection
3 Tips For Managing Passwords & Pins:
- Create Strong, Unique Passwords and PINs: It's risky to reuse a password or PIN across accounts.
- Keep Your Credentials Safe: Don't write down credentials, don't share your login and shield your credentials when you enter them.
- Store Your Credentials Safely: Consider using a password manager and don't store your login credentials in a browser
Avoid Easy-To-Guess Passwords
Each year, internet security firms release lists of the most frequently used passwords that were discovered in data breaches. Here are a few examples of common passwords that are easy for hackers to guess:
- password
- 123456
- qwerty
- 111111
- login
- iloveyou
To stay safe, avoid using the passwords above (or variations of them) for your personal accounts.
Tips for Your Unique Passphrase
Historically, “password complexity” meant long strings of numbers, characters and symbols that were nearly impossible to remember. A passphrase is a sequence of words or text, such as a short sentence or a group of random words, that may contain spaces and special characters. Longer passphrases are better, and they don't need to be complicated. If you create a passphrase that is meaningful to you, it will be easier for you to remember but harder for cybercriminals to guess.
Here are a few examples:
- Time for a strong coffee!
- Swim Smith Mountain Lake
- Pineapple pizza is the best!
Questions?
If you have questions, email our Information Security team at office_of_information_security@carilionclinic.org.
Avoid using the same password across multiple accounts.
Use a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters.
When changing your Carilion password, don’t use the word “Carilion” or any derivatives of Carilion (for example: C@rilion or C@r1l1on).
