Strong passwords are essential to our network systems. Cisco devices, which tend to be located at the entry points to our networks, affect entire networks instead of just one system.

  • Many password-cracking tools attempt to guess passwords by matching them with a dictionary.
  • Passwords that aren't in Webster's Dictionary, however, can also be cracked.
  • The best passwords use three of the four cases of characters: lower case, upper case, numbers, and special characters.
  • Passwords may also contain the first letters of each word in a phrase that a user can remember.