I once worked at a company where we were required to reset our passwords every 30 days. That included passwords to log onto our PC, our email password, password to log onto specific programs we needed for work, the password to our time clock, and the password for our benefits portal. We couldn’t use the same password twice in a calendar year and the passwords had to contain capital and lowercase letters, irregular characters, and numbers. Talk about a nightmare! Also, we were forbidden from storing them anywhere in a password manager or document on our PCs and we weren’t supposed to write them down.
Resetting and trying to figure out passwords ended up taking up a major chunk of everyone’s time as well as the attention of the IT department. Nowadays, thinking has changed on passwords. Experts suggest long, long sentences as opposed to a mish-mash of characters. They also say you don’t need to change them so frequently. (Unless, of course, there’s some type of security breach.)
How often should you change passwords? Getting a new code every single time you logged into something would be great. Changing every single password in your life to a password you’ve never used before every thirty days would be more secure than using the same one for a year. But the issue is that we’re human beings and we’ve got to remember these passwords or every single time we log onto something will turn into an ordeal.
If you’re someone who doesn’t do well with keeping track of or remembering passwords, frequently changing them is just going to make your life a misery and stop you from completing necessary tasks.
If you happen to be a person who’s good at keeping track of passwords and find you have no issues entering them, frequently changing them is an extra layer of security.
Now, if you really want to stay safe, you’ll enable a form of two-factor authentication. These days hackers use software to crack passwords, requiring an extra step to get in is much more effective than any password.