Must have at least six characters

Cannot be a word found in the dictionary.

Must contain at least two letters and one non-letter.

Required to be changed every six months (or when compromised).

Must be protected (i.e., no sharing of passwords no using the “remember password” ability of computers, etc.)

Don’t use personal information such as family names, phone numbers, etc.  They are to easy to guess.

Don’t use actual words in any language.  Hackers use computer programs with dictionaries to quickly run through all regular words.

Create a password that makes use of the first letter of the words of a phrase.  For example, if you can remember “I like working the 2:00 to 8:00 shift” you could turn that into a password that looks like this: Ilw2t8

Using a mix of upper and lower case letters and numbers makes a strong password.  An 8-character password using just lowercase letters and numbers will require 32.6 days for a computer to go through every possible permutation.  Combine upper and lowercase letters and numbers and it will take a computer 6.92 years to get through every permutation.