With it being the start of a new year, it’s as good a time as any to remember to change all of your passwords related to any online activity. Security is essential; everyone needs to be protected as much as possible.

SpashData has once again announced its annual list of the worst passwords. According to their data for 2013, many people did finally make the change from using “password” as a password, to using “123456” resulting in “password” moving down to the second worst password on the list now which is a change from 2012. SplashData states, “this year's list was influenced by the large number of passwords from Adobe users posted online by security consulting firm Stricture Consulting Group following Adobe's well publicized security breach.” They have been performing password analysis since 2011.

Adobe isn’t the only breach; we have seen recent reports of numerous others as well, in fact too many of them. This makes all of us even more uncomfortable about our online security. Remembering difficult passwords can be very problematic in that we are creating them to be hard for others to crack which makes them almost impossible for us to remember at times. We’ve all been given many suggestions already on how to create better passwords, and while constant reminders are given to change them, often many people still forget, or just don’t bother.

To add more suggestions to our existing knowledge base, here’s what SplashData suggests: “use passwords of eight characters or more with mixed types of characters. But even passwords with common substitutions like "dr4mat1c" can be vulnerable to attackers' increasingly sophisticated technology, and random combinations like "j%7K&yPx$" can be difficult to remember. One way to create more secure passwords that are easy to recall is to use passphrases -- short words with spaces or other characters separating them. It's best to use random words rather than common phrases. For example, "cakes years birthday" or "smiles_light_skip?" Avoid using the same username/password combination for multiple websites. Especially risky is using the same password for entertainment sites that you do for online email, social networking, or financial service sites. Use different passwords for each new website or service you sign up for.”

Password managers can also be of great assistance in this creative memory challenge we are all facing, and there are many different ones available to choose from. Help yourself stay protected; remember to change your passwords.