When you were given your login credentials to your website from Nicely Done Sites you probably noticed the password. It’s long and you don’t think there is any way that you will be able to remember it. Your first though it to change it to something more easily remembered but before you do that there are a few things that you should know. Secured passwords are a major part of keeping your website safe and there are tools that can make remembering it unnecessary.
Your username and password are protecting YOU
Poor login credentials are the number one reason that many websites or computer systems are breached. This has been no secret and has fortunately come to the forefront of public knowledge following several high profile data breaches in the past few years. Unfortunately people still choose to use less secure credentials.
We’ll just stick with your WordPress site for this, but think about what someone could gain access to if they were able to login using your credentials. That person could manipulate your data, which could drive customers away or drop you in SEO rankings. They could put up things to discourage people from doing business with you or donating to your cause. They could even wipe your website out wiping out all of the time and effort that went into building your site. Extortion or holding your site for ransom could also happen. None of that is good.
The stronger the password the harder it is to crack
Your login credentials are key to stopping this. The more generic the username and password that is used the easier it is to breach your site. When LinkedIn was breached in 2012 the most common passwords found were 123456 (or some variation of), linkedin, password, 111111, sunshine or qwerty. And if you thought you would be slick and use reverse psychology and use 654321 that was up there as well. With so many people using these passwords taking a guess using one of these would probably gain access to the site.
When you get a website from Nicely Done Sites you get a randomly generated username and a randomly generated strong password. These cannot be guessed using available data. The more complex the password the better and some of these passwords include not only numbers and letters but also symbols like # or %. As far as your username goes, if an attacker can figure out your naming convention it can make their just much easier. A random username will make breaching your site much more difficult.
How many different options?
Think about it. If you have a one character password it will take at most 95 tries to guess it (lower and upper case since passwords are case sensitive). That can be done reasonably quickly. Two characters expands that to 9,025. Eight can be complex enough with 6,634,204,312,890,625 potential options. By the time you get to sixteen characters like the one you get from Nicely Done Sites it is up to 4.401,266,686,517,657^31. That is a lot of options! Want to know how long your password could take to be cracked? Check this link out.
Humans have help to crack a password
The thing is that chances are a human will not be the one cracking the password. A bot can be programmed to do it for them. Humans can be incredibly lazy after all. Bots can be combined into a botnet for increased power and they can crack an 8 character password in about 26 days using a bitcoin mining rig. Double that to 16 characters and that system would still be trying to crack that password when you die. It’s also more than likely that it will still be trying when your children die. When you start measuring the amount of time in centuries it will take to crack you are in pretty good shape.
That is of course not to say that it is impossible to hack. Just doing a quick Google Search proves that. That can be which is why a random username can help as well. If a bot has to guess at both, well, your great-grandchildren might be on their deathbed by the time the password is cracked.
You don’t need to remember the password
Of course you are saying this is all well and good but if I can’t remember my password what’s the use? You have a couple of options for this. You can write the password down on a piece of paper, just make sure that you store it in a secure location should you need it later. The more secured method might be a password manager program. Not only can it store your WordPress site’s password but it can store other passwords as well. It can also be exported or shared so that it can be transferred to another computer. Password managers also store more than just login credentials, they can also store credit card information as well. Password managers can be secured easily so that unauthorized people will not be able to get in.
The username and password that Nicely Done Sites gives you is strong and secure. We’d like it to stay that way and we recommend that if you are going to change it or if you create new accounts to continue using strong and secure usernames and passwords. They may be impossible to remember but it will make your site more safer and more secure. Your security is only as good as the weakest link and all it can take is one unsecure password for an unauthorized person to gain access. Think of all you could lose if that would happen?
