Tech expert David Gerhard offers tips for a secure password you can remember

How to beat "bots" without taxing your memory

Image | Password Fatigue

Caption: Frustration over passwords is common across age brackets. (Damian Dovarganes/Associated Press)

It may not rank up there as one of life's big challenges, but as we embrace the digital world, all those devices, apps, and memberships require a password that needs to be changed – often.
ABCD or 1234 don't cut it.
What you need is a complex password that's designed to flummox those unscrupulous programmers who are doing their best to break into your on-line bank account.
But here's the problem. How do you come up with something that safeguards your privacy, and still stands out in your over-taxed memory?

One idea for a secure, memory friendly password

CBC Radio's Saskatoon Morning posed this very question to David Gerhard, an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Regina.
Here is Gerhard's tip for a secure, but memory friendly password.
"Take a line from a poem or a song or whatever and just take the first letter of each word and then the password becomes short enough that it's easy and quick to type in," said the tech expert.
"Then it's sort of the best of both worlds. You can remember it, and the password cracking software is less likely to be able to guess it."