Security Summit Partners Highlight New Password Guidance

As part of National Security Awareness Week the IRS, state tax agencies and the nation’s tax industry is urging people to review new, stronger standards to protect the passwords of their online accounts.

These new standards are a reflection of the new thinking on what a strong password is. The latest guidance suggests using a passphrase such as a favorite line from a movie or a series of associated words for their password. The idea is to create a passphrase that can be remembered easily.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology or NIST last year rethought its guidance on passwords and suggested three steps to build a better password:

Step 1 – Leverage your powers of association. Identify associated items that have meaning to you. 

Step 2 – Make the associations unique to you. Passphrases should be words that can go together in your head, but no one else would ever suspect. Good example: Items in your living room such as BlueCouchFlowerBamboo. Bad example: Names of your children.

Step 3 – Picture this. Create a passphrase that you can picture in your head. In our example, picture items in your living room. The key is to create a passphrase that is hard for a cybercriminal to guess but easy for you to remember

For more information see the IRS News Release of Dec 4 - Security Summit Partners highlight new password guidance, urge taxpayers and practitioners to protect all accounts