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Creating Stronger Passwords

One way to meet the suggested criteria for creating strong passwords is to mix special characters, upper and lowercase letters, and numbers, and associate them with a phrase or song titles. The following example demonstrates how you might do this:

Step 1 Choose a Phrase:
    Home of the University of Houston Cougars.

Step 2 Write down the first character of each word:
    HotUoHC-s
(To meet the 8 character minimum, Cougars was hyphenated as "C-s".)

Step 3 Substitute special characters and numbers to increase complexity:
    H0tUo@UU-s

NOTE: Choose substitutions that are meaningful to you; this makes it easier to remember.

Passwords should NOT be:

  • based on personal information, such as names of family, dates, addresses, phone numbers, pet names, etc.
  • based on work information, such as room numbers, building name, co-worker's name, phone number, etc.
  • made up of a word or number patterns like aaabbb, qwerty, zyxwvuts, 123321, abcABC123, etc.
  • a word or combination of words found in any dictionary in any language, slang, dialect, jargon, etc.
  • based on your username, your real name, handle, nickname, screen name, etc.

For More Information

For more information about Strong Passwords at UH, go to www.uh.edu/strongpasswords.