ou shall not pass. All Lord of the Rings fans out there will know what I am “Tolkien” about. For others, you can always Google this phrase and read up on the significance of someone/ something hindering unauthorised or unwanted access to you or anything you are protecting.

This reminds me that passwords have become a major thing in this day and age. Given our increasing dependence on technology to do all the heavy lifting, both mentally and physically, we are choosing to become dumber.

Dumber how, you might ask. Well, the hippocampus in our brain responsible for memory is not being put to good use these days. Again, how, you might ask. If you are a boomer or a millennial (like me), you had to commit stuff to your brain because we weren’t so efficient with pen and paper, and the timely availability of the right paper couldn’t always be guaranteed. I can bet that you’d remember your first home telephone (landline) number, your friend’s numbers and so on. But if I ask the digital natives about their closest friend’s mobile phone number, it’s unlikely that they will remember it.

Now that I have shown (okay, somewhat) that technology is making us dumber, allow me to state that we, the homo sapiens — the prime species on this planet (let’s believe it for the sake of this column at least) — have jumped hungrily at technological advancement, and there seems to be no stopping us. Access, security and authentication are becoming a major challenge for security keepers everywhere. From the digital lock in our cars, to simply accessing the internet, security is a risk we face every day.

Periodically, there are brains outsmarting the security in place, and periodically the security companies come up with new suggestions to mitigate this risk. There is no end to this.

If you remember the published researches on the easiest passwords kept by individuals that included consecutive digits, their names, a hello, or just 1234, you’d wonder why someone would have such a password. My question is, why not?

If you look at the current security protocols they tell you to use a capital letter in your password; the length should be not less than 8 characters; there should be one number, sometimes two; and there should be one special character. A good password policy will maintain your previous passwords as history and won’t let you fall back on anything. You’ll have to keep inventing (passwords).

They will even judge you on the easy passwords by calling them “weak.” Why is this important? Well, because of the bad guys. There are programmes and machines trying to guess your passwords. Recently, a thing called 2FA — or Two Factor Authorisation — has been enforced, wherein your password is not enough and you need to authenticate yourself via a second route.

Is that annoying? Yes. Is it necessary? Also, yes. After all, your data is important. Imagine you are in the middle of work, and all of a sudden you are prompted that some of your passwords are compromised and that you should change those. To me, this is an arduous activity: why should I have to change my passwords over and over? The company should have been careful to not leave the passwords lying around for someone to just pick up. Do you know how hard it is to remember the password to your banking mobile apps, your office laptop (because what I work on is super secret), your emails, your favourite shopping websites, all the PIN numbers of your cards and what not?

It’s not that I don’t like technology. I love it. The advancement, the possibilities, the easier life, the life-saving aspect of it, are all great. But how do you stop the data-stealing bandits from breaking into your accounts? That’s the million dollar question.

I have figured it out my way. I’d never fall in any of those easy-money or free-stuff trap. Because all that is one big fat lie. Everything comes at a cost. So, any such offer is just a scam. Always start with this assumption.

That said, I’ll always recommend setting different and strong passwords for your major portals. After all, money and data security are important. So, be vigilant. And be safe.

Daniyal Raza is a project manager in a technology company. He loves to hang out and try new food