Microsoft, McAfee and more join forces to promote security with World Password Day

Security is fun! Security is sexy! In fact, passwords get so many hearts pounding that World Password Day had to be dreamed up just to create an outlet for the outpouring of emotion associated with them. This may be stretching things a little, but today really is World Password Day, a global movement involving McAfee, Microsoft, Dell, Acer, Lenovo and numerous other big names to educate the world about... passwords! I jest a little, but this is a day with a serious message -- we are all incredibly reliant on passwords, but too many of them are just not strong enough.

Head on over to the website and you'll find all manner of tools designed to stress the importance of strong passwords, and to promote good practices. Things get off to a fairly gentle start with a typing game in which you're invited to type common passwords and blast them out of the sky. There are also tools and tips from each of the companies involved in the project. Microsoft has a password checker that will test the strength of your password, McAfee (now nothing to do with John McAfee!) has a Heartbleed vulnerability checker, while Dell has the handy tip that one shouldn’t type one's password into the username field.

Michelle Dennedy, chief privacy officer at McAfee, said: "Our goal this World Password Day is to educate consumers on ways they can proactively protect their identities, and other personal information and assets, through a series of simple steps".

We’ve been talking about World Password Day here at BetaNews, and the claim made on the website that "90 percent of all passwords are vulnerable" certainly set our minds racing. Brian was prompted to ask "how do I get one of the 10 percent unhackable passwords?" Fair question! But the fact of the matter is that we can all do something to improve our password security. I'm not sure how well the suggestion that people might want to "host a #passwordday party in your classroom" will go down, but every little bit helps, I guess.

Head on over to the site to see if there's anything you can learn.

Photo Credit: Dr. Cloud/Shutterstock