With digital insecurity threatening everyone today, your password is your first defense when it comes to achieving digital security.  With the multitude of internet ills, it is crucial to adopt secure methods of ensuring your passwords are uncrackable.

Go long on the length.

A long password frustrates password crackers. While it is essential to mix up characters such as uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols, etc., it will be an added advantage if your password has a long length. A character length of at least 12 to 15 characters is recommendable. It makes it hard for a password cracker to know your password.

Avoid common substitutions

One secret of achieving a secure password is by going random. Many people choose common names like slogans, pop culture names, celebrity names, your friend's or lover's names, pet names, nicknames, last name, year of birth combination, etc. While settling for such names is fantastic and convenient, a malicious person close to you can easily hack such a password.

One way of coming up with random passwords is through a password manager. It helps you string up unique characters or , and you don't have to worry about memorizing as it keeps it safe. You only need to remember one master key to access all your passwords.

Separate characters

When you come up with unique characters for your password, you would be a step ahead of the hackers if you keep them separated. Try not to cram or bunch them up together at the beginning, middle or the end. Why? Almost everyone's password has no spaces in between, and password crackers already target this. Keeping your password all spaced up makes their guesswork difficult and unsuccessful.

Do not recycle

For people who use password management already know that re-using passwords is a no-no. Ensure you use a particular password on only one account. I'll help you understand this. For instance, if you use the password for all your accounts and a breach happens in one of the accounts, you end up losing all your credentials in all the other accounts. Remember that when hackers manage to access one of your accounts, they move on to the other accounts using the same password. It can be very costly, especially with banking or financial accounts.

While everyone has a personal password they can quickly memorize, ensure you do re-use any password for your cybersecurity.

Avoid using memorable keyboard paths.

An example of a memorable keyboard path is "qwerty" or "1234567". Avoid such at all costs. Password crackers start by guessing famous keyboard paths, and if you use such a password, you will likely fall prey to cyber hacks.

Play with your keyboard

The keyboard can come up with millions and millions of character combinations. Do not be afraid to delve deep into it as you craft your password. The emoticons such as the smiley face, sad face are not only useful while chatting or writing messages. Utilize them to make your password as unique as possible.

Do not share your password.

As common and simple as this point is, it is as important as all the other password secrets. Be it, your friend, or a close person, you never know when someone has malicious motives.

A point to note, avoid writing your passwords down randomly, especially in a public place or in the workplace.

The bottom line

While creating unique passwords, remember that creating a password you can't remember is useless, so ensure it is memorable or use a password manager.