"Passwords are the softest security target and until people and organisations start adopting strong authentication in the form of, for instance, two-factor authentication this problem won’t go away" – Jason Hart, VP Security at CRYPTOCard.
The article in IT Pro Is your password really as secure as you think it is? has some thoughts on how to create and encourage better passwords. The methods seem a bit tedious for normal computer users who have little on their computers to steal, but the logic of creating a method for all passwords and sticking to it is an important one to promote.
The overall topic is social engineering...and how the BlackHats are getting very clever at making tools to crack more elaborate passwords.
Anyone who deals with projector or media players should certainly have good password practices. It would be logical that anyone who passes security keys around should also figure out a pattern for creating passwords.
The article's idea of putting in the last letter of the site associated with the password is a good first stop. So, the password for dcinematools would start with an 's', and since it is easier to have most letters following be small letter, making the 'S' capitalized is a second good stop.
One imagines that eventually hackers will start putting the letters of typical phrases into their dictionary cracking databases. I find it easier to use the letters of some object that is in front of me all day, but never a whole word. So, if the American Heritage Dictionary is in front of me, I might choose the first three letters from each word, and put a number in between each, with one of them being shifted to a symbol. I also have found that I give numbers based upon sensitivity, so that public sites which might have their data stolen get higher (or lower) numbers while more secure sites get the opposite.
Like all matters dealing with responsibility for other people's assets (equipment, art, friendship...), passwords are a sometimes pain, often done away with without penalty, but important that one time that it was required. Having a pattern will, in this case with the human-machine relationship, make things easier the one time that it might matter.
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