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How To Make Strong, Modern Passwords (And Why You Need To)
The passwords of the past simply don’t keep us safe online. It’s long past time to drag our passwords into the modern era.
Anthony Collette
September 16, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 6 minutes
Happy Tuesday! With the release of Hamilton in theaters this month, we're reminded of the era the Founding Fathers lived in. Candles and oil lamps to light homes, and wood for heat in fireplaces. Although the people were brilliant, there was definitely no brilliance supplied by electricity, because in the age of Hamilton, Franklin and Washington, there wasn’t any practical application of electricity yet. |  |
We don't live in that era anymore.
Thankfully today we use candles for mood, more than lighting. And our homes are often all electric, instant on with no soot or ash. Quite an improvement!
In previous years, following advice in books like Perfect Passwords, we crafted our own passwords, memorized them, and typed them into countless online accounts. What a hassle!
Thankfully the era of Perfect Passwords ended, and now we’re living in the era of The Modern Password.
— Anthony Collette
Founder, Loistava Information Security
In 2006 security consultant, author and researcher Mark Burnett published a groundbreaking book, Perfect Passwords. Inside you would have found 175 pages of tips, techniques, word lists and strategies — everything you’d ever need to craft strong, memorable passwords, suitable for the time. Mark’s useful book was a bestseller, quickly gained an impressive following, and boasted tons of glowing endorsements from the IT security industry’s top names.
Six years later it was painfully out of date.
The speed of change had accelerated dramatically. Hackers began using systems that routinely guessed billions of passwords per second. Consumers' use of the Internet expanded to include 70, 80 or 100+ online accounts. It became impossible for a typical internet user to create, memorize and manage strong, unique passwords for every site.
Eventually Mark posted this on his blog:
For years I have advocated using long, memorable passwords using a variety of different memorization techniques. Humor, repetition, common suffixes, memorable phrases, and other methods are great for creating long passwords that are easy to remember. But now my philosophy has changed: now I say just go ahead and use a password manager and generate long, random passwords for each online account.
Why would the guy who literally wrote the book on how to create “perfect passwords” completely change direction, abandon his successful body of work, and tell the world to use Password Managers instead?
Simple.
The World changed, what worked previously didn’t work any longer, and Mark’s an honest broker of cybersecurity advice.
Now we need Modern Passwords which can’t be guessed by brute-force attacks and are unique to every account you have (in case one is compromised in a data hack or leak).
What does a Modern Password look like?
Password Managers create long, truly complex passwords composed of random characters that look like:
r8:W3=7uU0VpcS
Impossible to remember but — that’s the point. Password Managers create millions of these Modern Passwords every day.
The Perfect Passwords era of thinking up and memorizing passwords in bulk to log in to online accounts is over. That era ended in 2012 when Mark Burnett (and many other cyber pros) forcefully recommended the use of Password Managers. That was more than 13 years ago!
For whatever reasons, the mass media didn’t tell us the old era died; that message simply didn’t get through. It’s like the funeral came and went but we weren’t invited.
As a society, we need to tell cybersecurity stories more persuasively to a much wider audience.
Why? Because people are getting their down payments stolen, their retirement accounts hacked, and their businesses shuttered. So much of this is preventable, and you wouldn’t want it to happen to your parents or grandparents, your kids, or your friends.
That’s why we founded the Digital Kleptos™ newsletter — to find and amplify stories that help people see these issues more clearly from another angle. Sometimes more seriously, and sometimes . . . not so seriously, like this entertaining 3-minute video introducing the concept of Modern Passwords.
Next week we’ll continue our Brilliant At The Basics of Cybersecurity series with a deep dive into Password Managers — how they work, their strengths and limitations, and one surprising benefit that’s often overlooked.
We spend a huge portion of our lives online. Staying safe online is now a high priority.
You have the power to keep yourself safer online!
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Cybersecurity is a modern form of wealth, and you deserve to keep what you've earned.
Looking forward to connecting again next week.
— Anthony Collette
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