Choosing a Password

Tue 16 January, 2018

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Passwords seem to be the bane of teachers’ lives. Having to remember so many can be exhausting. But making sure you have a secure password and making sure you don’t share it, or make it accessible to other people is basic e-safety. The number of times I have seen passwords on post-it notes, stuck to a laptop is frightening. Especially when they are for programs like SIMS which contains confidential and sensitive information.

Often the problem staff find is that the password expires after about 30 days, which means they must change them and have to keep track of what one they are on.

Keep the password as simple as you can, without making it guessable. Password1 is not secure, nor is welcome, logmein or P4ssword. Choose something you can remember, a pet’s name etc, then add a capital letter to the beginning and a number at the end. Using the month number can be helpful. To make it extra secure think about putting ! or another simple symbol in it.

Another way to make it secure is to substitute numbers for letters. So rover could become R0v3r2017! if you were using a pet’s name.

You can often use a similar password to access different things, but just change one character so you aren’t using the same password for everything.

If you do have to make a note of it, make sure it is somewhere not on display. In a diary or on the notes on your phone are better options than right next to your laptop.

If you want to change your network login, simply press Ctrl, Alt and delete keys and it will give you an option to Change Password.