What are the characteristics of a strong password?

A strong password is characterized by its complexity and unpredictability, making it more difficult for attackers to guess or crack. The best practice for creating a strong password involves using a mix of upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. This combination increases the potential character set, which significantly enhances the password's strength because it raises the number of possible combinations an attacker would have to try.

Incorporating different types of characters not only discourages brute force attacks but also helps protect against common password cracking techniques that often focus on simpler and more predictable patterns. A truly secure password should avoid easily guessable information, such as dictionary words or common phrases, and instead should be crafted to meet the criteria of being lengthy and diverse in character types.

Other choices provided would not meet the criteria for a strong password. Passwords composed solely of numbers and symbols lack the necessary diversity of character types, those with a length of fewer than 8 characters are typically considered weak due to the limited number of potential combinations, and sequences that follow predictable patterns, like alphabetical order, are also easily exploitable. Thus, the combination of various character types is key to ensuring effective password security.