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Defend Your GEMS Account - Secure Your Password Like a Pro

 

Our password is more than just a key to our online account. If our password falls into the wrong hands, someone can easily impersonate us while online, engage in GEMS transactions that are meant only for us and even change our personal information. The best password should be something that is easy  to remember but personal enough that not even our closest friend or family can guess. This article is aimed at giving us some ideas with 5 useful tips on how to create and maintain a secure password like a professional.

 

Note : Please note that we should NOT be directly using any of the examples shown in this article however, they can be used as ideas to help us create a secure password.

 

 

Tip 1: Use Different Characters

GEMS allows us to use different character classes in our passwords. In general, the more character classes we use in our password, the more secure it will be. The letters a to z are one character class, A to Z is another, 0 to 9 is another, and the symbols are another. Therefore we should get creative when creating our password by adding different character classes into our password.  A visual example of how  "zahirah" is less secure than "zaHiraH" which is less secure than "Z@Hir@H" is illustrated on the right:

 

 

 

 

Tip 2: Use Letters From a Phrase

Have a favourite song or phrase? Use the first letter from each word in a phrase or a line from a phrase, etc.  For example if there was a phrase titled  “Di Mana Ada Kemahuan Di Situ Ada Jalan” could become DMAKDSAJ

 

 

 

Tip 3: More Than Just a Word

Single word passwords are typically much more vulnerable than multiple words. Use two or more words and separate them with a symbol. For example, using the words "I", "Love", "Cats" we can generate a password that looks like "I&Love&Cats"

 

 

It is important to note that we should try not to use any words that are available in a dictionary. There are malicious hacking programs that uses words in a dictionary to match your passwords easily therefore compromising the security of your password.

 

 

Tip 4: From Words To Numbers

Another creative idea is to use our mobile phones to convert words into numbers. For example by typing only once on our phone messaging application the word "LOVEGEMS" we will get "56834367"

 

 

 

Tip 5: Systemize Password Changes

GEMS requires us to change our password every 90 days therefore it will be useful if we can think up of a creative way to systematically change it every time the occasion calls for it. One way of systematically changing our password is to add a date based element into our password. For example, add J09 or 609 at the end of your password if you are required to change it in June 2009. A table below illustrates this example to help us understand how to systemize our password changes:

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Do you have anymore tips on how to create secure passwords? Let us know by emailing it to us at gems@psd.gov.bn

 
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ã 2010 Brunei Government Prime Minister's Office. All Rights Reserved. Email us at gems@psd.gov.bn

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