Tom’s Tuesday Tech Tip: Time to Change Your Passwords (Again)

If there are three words all Certified Legal Nurse Consultants long to hear from their significant others (“Steaks are done!”), there are also three words that no CLNC^® consultant ever wants to hear (“Change your passwords!”). Whether you like it or not, changing your passwords on a regular basis is a must-do for your legal nurse consulting business or personal uses, and I do mean on all the websites where you use a password.

I’ve seen some reports that recommend changing passwords monthly, while others recommended quarterly. The stronger your passwords are, the less of an issue this may be – unless, of course, you’re like most people and use the same password over multiple accounts/websites. A classic example is the people who use the same password on various social media sites (Twitter and Facebook), shopping sites, or for both eBay and its banking/payment arm, PayPal^®. If one site gets hacked the bad guys will often try your email/password combination on similar sites with possibly disastrous results for your banking or social media.

So, what’s a Certified Legal Nurse Consultant do to? The easiest, and hardest, thing is to change your passwords on a regular basis. As I’ve recommended in the past, use complex passwords of at least 8 characters with a mix of upper- and lower-case letters, numbers and symbols and keep an offline written record so you don’t forget them.

Do I recommend storing passwords in your web browser? Yes I do. Is that safe? Yes, depending on who has access to your computer, and until that function is hacked. Another option is to use a password vault similar to OnePassword.

Otherwise, just as your mother would tell you “brush your teeth,” I’m reminding you to “change your passwords.”

Keep on techin’,