That’s what I said, “It’ll never happen to me. I have a great password. I don’t click on strange links or open emails from people I don’t know. Ha!

Guess what I just dealt with?

The infamous Heartbleed bug. If you’ve paid any attention to recent news, you will have heard about how businesses and individuals alike have been forced to change and improve their passwords. For years we could get away with using simple passwords like our dog’s name, or the license plate number of our car. (please tell me you didn’t used your birthday!) ,  Then bugs got sneakier and we had to up the ante in how complex our passwords became.

If you haven’t changed your password yet, change it right after reading this post! 

Let me share with you what I’ve learned.

If your password is username, guest, admin, or something along those lines,change it!  You’ve just put out the welcome mat, left the front door open and have tea and biscuits waiting. Seriously.  You don’t leave your front door unlocked when you go to work each day, so don’t let strangers get into your account so easily.

Anything that resembles a word can be hacked given the time and resources. Even if you put a number in with it and include upper and lower case letters – they’ll still get it.Even if it’s a nonsense word like ‘flingl3horp’ – they’ll get that too. *sigh* What’s a girl to do?

You come up with a much better password in less than a minute.- that’s what you do! Here’s what I did:

Take a phrase you love and can easily remember. It can be an obscure song lyric, a nursery rhyme, a quote or anything you want.

For example, here’s the chorus for “O Canada”.

“O Canada! Our home and native land! True patriot love in all thy sons command!”

Take the first letter of every word and chain it into a password. HINT: Use the exclamation marks as well to make it even more complex. This gives you “Oc!Ohanl!Tpliatsc!”

How easy was that?!  Ok, so don’t use Oh Canada! because everyone that reads this post will use it. Choose a line from your favourite song or a phrase that your mom used to say and create a password from it and you will have an incredibly difficult password to guess that is very easy for you to remember.

A big thank you to, Patt Leger of Geek Boutiq for her knowledge, dedication and determination. One call was all it took and my site was back in business and better than ever in no time whatsoever. Thanks Patt!

Now Go Get Connected!

About Cathy Kuzel

With 25+ years of experience as a successful Entrepreneur and Business Consultant helping Entrepreneurs succeed, she is recognized across Canada for her in-house and public seminars on “All Things Small Biz”. Named one of the Top Ten Mentors in Canada, Cathy is the Founder of The Connected Woman Association, Author of “Are You a Collector or a Connector?”; “I’m on the Phone!”; the internationally known “Daily Espressos” and is a networking maven.