Understand how “brute force” and “dictionary” password breaches happen

The best way to protect yourself from having your password stolen by bad actors is to understand how they can guess your password — and brute force attacks are one of the most common methods. This is when an automated program attempts to discover your password by entering words often found in a dictionary. If you want to keep your passwords safe, don’t use these. Use made-up words, acronyms, or random strings of characters instead.