I don't know about you, but I can't remember passwords. It's not very secure to use the same password for everything, so I need to use many different passwords every day. To make matters worse, most of them have restrictions on how they must be formed. Here are some of the different restrictions I have:
PIN number must be 4 digits
PIN must be six to 12 numbers
Password must be 6 to 32 characters long and contain at least one number
Passwords: 1. Must be 6 characters or longer 2. Cannot contain any part of the username 3. Must contain the following: - Numbers - Letters - No Repeating Characters
1. Password length will be at least 6 characters long. 2. Password history will be set to at least 2 changes (how soon a password can be reused). 3. Maximum password age will be 90 days ( period of time, in days, that a password can be used
before the system requires the user to change it). 4. Complexity requirement: Not contain all or part of the user's account name Be at least six characters in length Contain characters from three of the following four categories: a. English uppercase characters (A through Z) b. English lowercase characters (a through z) c. Base 10 digits (0 through 9) d. Nonalphanumeric characters (e.g., !, $, #, %)
I wanted to come up with a system that would work for all my passwords (excluding PIN numbers), but did not require me to remember anything. Impossible? Well, almost - I only have to remember one thing - a simple pattern on the keyboard that only I know. I can begin the pattern any place I like, but the pattern itself is always the same. Now, instead of remembering passwords, I only need to remember the starting point of the pattern, right? Wrong! I don't need to remember anything except the pattern, because I can make my starting points as public as I want. I can keep my list of starting points on a sticky-note on my monitor, in a document file, in an email, in my wallet, on my web site - anywhere I like, because it doesn't matter if anyone sees them.
Here are some of my "passwords" I use every day in my job. Remember that they follow the complex rules stated above. Each of the numbers below tells me where I should start my secret pattern, and the pattern is all I ever have to remember. Since I use the same pattern for all my passwords, I don't think I'll forget it!
Network = 5 Portal = 28 Oracle = 2 HRB = 30 NLR = 7 EZLabor = 13
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