The most secure passwords? They are passphrases

These are a set of words, or alphanumeric strings, provided by the user in order to access an operating system, program or network

Every day when we log in or sign up for a new service on the Internet we use a password as our access key. And we do it believing that this is a safe and reliable way to protect our privacy. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

The majority of users, in fact, despite the news of numerous cyber attacks in recent years, continue to use unsecure passwords. Like their own name or the name of their city. Despite the fact that sites allow us to choose from a combination of uppercase, lowercase, numbers and symbols, few create complex passwords. And this bad trend is not only trending on social and apps, but also on email inboxes and even online bank accounts. "I regret the advice given" was the comment of Bill Burr, the one who in 2003 together with the National Institute of Standards and Technology created the passwords as we know them today.

Using passphrases   

"It is useless to create standards and possibilities to generate complex passwords, - said Burr - people for convenience will continue to use access keys that a hacker through a particular software can decipher in a few minutes". If most of the passwords we choose for our accounts are more or less insecure, how do we maintain our privacy and cybersecurity? Burr recommends the use of passphrases. In computer science, this term refers to a set of words, or alphanumeric strings, provided by the user in order to access an operating system, program or network. In practice it is a password much more complex and long than those we use today. The dilemma is always the same: will users abandon simple passwords in favor of more secure access keys? According to Burr, the combination of passphrases with other authentication systems, such as fingerprints or two-step verification, will be crucial in the future because cyber attacks will become more and more prevalent and will affect individual users as well as companies and SMBs.