We live in a digital age where most of our personal information lives in cyberspace. While passwords are a common and advised way of protecting your information, you need to make sure that you are using them correctly so as to ensure optimal protection. As you think of new practices to incorporate into your lifestyle this year, consider adding cyber fitness.

ESET has put together a handful of tips for ‘exercises’ that will be good for your cyber-fitness.

Don’t pass up on stubborn passwords

Passwords have a bad rap, and deservedly so; they suffer from weaknesses, both in terms of security and convenience; this makes them a less-than-ideal method of authentication.  However, much of what the internet offers is independent of your signing up for this or that online service, and the available form of authentication almost universally happens to the username/password combination.

As the keys that open online accounts, passwords are often rightly thought of as the first, and often only, line of defence that protects your virtual and real assets from intruders. However, passwords don’t offer much in the way of protection unless, in the first place, they’re strong and unique to each device and account.

But what constitutes a strong password?  A passphrase! Done right, typical passphrases are generally both more secure and more user-friendly than typical passwords. The longer the passphrase and the more words it packs, the better—with seven words providing for a solid start. With each extra character (not to mention words), the number of possible combinations rises exponentially, which makes simple brute-force password-cracking attacks far less likely to succeed, if not well-nigh impossible.

Have no sympathy for the passphrase-cracker

Another caveat is that it’s better to refrain from phrases that have made it into the everyday lexicon. Entire books, famous quotes or lyrics already tend to be part of the fodder of password-cracking tools. The individual words should be in random order and, ideally, sprinkled with special characters and character substitution, all the while retaining a hidden meaning and memorability to its creator.

Then, of course, there is a need for each passphrase to be distinct for each account so that a leak of one of your passphrases doesn’t reverberate through your other and possibly more valuable accounts. Alas, the dangerous practice of password recycling is ubiquitous and attackers can exploit it hands-down with an automated technique known as ‘credential stuffing’.

It’s quite likely that you use too many online accounts to remember a distinct passphrase for each of them. In which case, it’s worth considering a reputable vault/manager that encrypts your password storage and takes away much of the pain that password management involves. Of course, such a tool can also generate randomised and complex passwords and passphrases for you.

Don’t skip the second step

Another trouble with passwords/passphrases may arise when they are not only the first but also the only line of defence for your account security. When the barrier crumbles—commonly through a phishing attack or by attackers somehow working out your login details—an extra authentication factor that does not rely on ‘something you know’ may very well foil your adversaries.

Two-factor authentication (2FA), or multi-factor authentication (MFA), is an excellent way of boosting the security of your accounts, especially when coupled with hardware keys or dedicated apps, and less so with SMS-borne 2FA. Although many online services provide 2FA options, few require its use. However, the adoption of 2FA has been on the rise and it’s never been easier to jump on the practice. Regardless, if its implementation, signing up for 2FA whenever you can is well worth the little extra effort because it can help in various scenarios, including a cyber attack compromising any of your passwords.

In fact, it’s quite probable that some of your authentication details will be, or have already been, stolen and posted online or made available for sale on underground marketplaces.  The source of these password leaks includes the many security breaches that have blighted online services, retailers, hotel chains and the like.  Additionally, the targeted entity may have protected the user’s passwords with weak hashing and salting functions, or even stored the passwords in plain text. Worse still, the service provider may not know until quite a while later that hackers pilfered the often poorly secured data or purchased them on the dark web, so you had no shot at taking any ad-hoc defensive measures. Again, this is also where the extra authentication factor will usually thwart any account-takeover attempts.

Use fewer passwords

Surely a mistake, right? Well, it may sound counterintuitive, but fixing your passwords may also imply needing fewer of them in the first place. More precisely, it means cutting ties with the services you no longer use, so that you needn’t ‘look after’ your accounts with them.  We all have set up accounts that we no longer use. Indeed, we may have racked up quite a few of them over the years, including some that we barely remember. However, the adage ‘the internet never forgets’ fits here too, and forgetting is something you shouldn’t do either.

The trouble with unused accounts is that each of them—even if only a vestige of your much younger self—is a potential source of danger. The service may suffer a breach, exposing your password, or may be sold to new owners whose intentions might not exactly be honest. Or, if miscreants take over your account, they might be able to use it to break into one of your highly valued accounts.

But what doesn’t exist can’t be taken over, can it? Feel no remorse: just dispatch those accounts to a better place and never look back.  There are even services that promise to scale back your online footprint in bulk.

While you’re cutting the clutter, consider also severing ties with third-party apps and services that are associated with your accounts on social and other major sites, especially the apps that you no longer use. These apps, too, can be misused as other entry points for illicit data collection or even worse. To pull the plug on their access to your account and data, navigate to the privacy and/or security settings of your online service(s) of choice; from there, it usually takes only a click or two.