Choosing a strong password

It can be tempting to pick a short and easy-to-remember password, like "password123" or something based on your daughter's name or your birthday. But please. Don't!

HIFIS contains a lot of personal, private, and sensitive data about a very vulnerable population, so we take security very seriously. If someone were able to guess your password, they would gain access to all the client files, case notes, financial and health information that you yourself have access to. We would like you to take whatever steps you can to prevent that.

The current best practices about internet passwords suggest that the best thing to do is to use pass phrases instead of pass words. For example, if you use a password of "Fluffy" which is your dog's name, a pass phrase might be "Fluffy is a sheepdog". Yes, you can use spaces in a passphrase!

Experts suggest that the best passwords are long. The longer the password, the longer it takes for a hacker to crack it. But, on the plus side, if you come up with a good long pass phrase that you can remember easily and uses a combination of character types, you won't have to change it ever again!