Changing your password regularly is a bad idea ?

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For several years now we/you have been encouraged to opt for a password “strong“. Indeed, a recent study showed that while it takes around 7 years to hack a password comprising 8 characters with lowercase letters, uppercase letters and special characters, if it only includes 4 numbers, this last one can be found almost instantly. Other recommendations regarding passwords include changing them regularly.

More and more changes… lazy people ?

And in this little game, it’s correct, changing your passwords regularly can help increase security. However, according to the company specializing in cybersecurity Kaspersky, changing your password regularly would also tend to… to make us opt for passwords that are increasingly easy to remember.

Also, changing passwords regularly would push us to opt for increasingly weak models… and thus lead to a reduction in security. As always, it is essential to avoid reusing the same password on several services as much as possible, to avoid abuse if one of the associated services were to be hacked.

However, it is impossible (or almost impossible) for us to memorize a strong and different password for each of the services to which we connect regularly. Also, cybersecurity experts recommend using a secure password manager, which requires memorizing only one master password. On this subject, we highly recommend this guide which lists the best offers on the market. A single password to somehow rule them all.

What if “ 123456 ”, “ 123456789 ” or even “ azerty ” are still the most used passwords in France, creating passwords by adding emojis could make the hackers' task enormously more complex. “Adding one to your password forces hackers to go through approximately 3 700 variations per symbol” explained recently Kaspersky. Please note, however, that some very popular services simply do not allow you to create passwords with emojis.

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