Passwords are the heart and soul of our technological universe. We use passwords to keep people out or away from information that is valuable. We use passwords to protect phones, computers, and bank accounts.

Stephen Coury is the CISO (chief information security officer) for the City and County of Denver. Having a complex password is key to keeping your business and personal life safer.

“A way to make a password less likely to be guessed involves adding complexity. To protect your password from being guessed or broken through a dictionary attack, where common words are tried, you should avoid using words,” Stephen said.

The best way of making a password complex is by using lower, upper case letters, numbers and special characters. Avoiding consecutive numbers such as one, two, three and four.

“The best way to make a password is to pick one word that is comfortable for you, then make it complex. For example, if “rainforest” is a password you would like to use, toughen it up. Substitute characters to make it complex. Consider making some characters capital, some special characters, and some numbers,” Stephen said.

It is always important to have more than one password you use for your accounts. You don’t want to have your bank account password to be the same as what you use for email.

Many systems are hacked into each day because of lack of security. A good example is Sony and how they got hacked by leaving all their passwords in one place not being protected. Even if you have a complex password you need to keep it safe as it will become useless if you leave it out for the world to see.

Tips to creating passwords