If it’s been a while since you’ve changed your passwords, it might be time to do so. But contrary to what one might think, there is no point in tackling it every month. So, how often should you strengthen your security codes? The answer.
To prevent the risk of hacking of our personal data, or the fear of intrusion on company servers, it is common to have to change your password. Generally, for it to be secure, it must contain special characters, upper and lower case letters, numbers, as well as a certain length. But it is not necessarily necessary to modify it every month. Indeed, by wanting to replace it too often, we take the risk of adding only one letter or a character compared to the old password and it then loses all its effectiveness.
According to the British intelligence agency, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), these regular updates would be useless in the professional context, especially as they “would increase the workload of employees”, it specifies in its password guide, published in 2015. The agency recommends changing your password when you have doubts about the risk of hacking.
Another security agency: Anssi (National Information Systems Security Agency) sets the date not to be exceeded for changing your password. It is therefore not a question of doing it too often, but of renewing it every 90 days, a frequency considered “reasonable”. “Passwords must have a maximum validity date. This ensures that a password discovered by a malicious user will not be usable indefinitely over time” recommends the agency. Of course, avoid doing like many French people: do not communicate your codes, avoid writing them down on paper (so as not to forget it) or in a computer file, and do not choose sequences of numbers or letters that are too simple, like 123abc.