One of the hackers most common tools for cracking is defeating passwords. Be it through social engineering, guessing, or brute force attacking, defeating user or system passwords is a hackers gateway. Therefore, it stands to reason that weak passwords are your greatest vulnerability on the internet today.

Social Engineering - the easiest way to get you to unknowingly give up your password, is a simple email telling you there has been a security breach to your account, with a convenient link to "Click Here" to reset your password. Never click that link, no matter how authentic it appears, never use links in emails - when in doubt, always go directly to your bank/email/etc via typing the URL into the browser.

Weak Passwords - weak passwords are your birthday, dictionary words, numbers, etc. You should strive to have passwords greater than 12 digits, have UPPER + lower + 123 + !@# - this type of password would take hundreds of years to crack with brute force tools working 24/7. In leu of special characters, increase the length to 16 or 20 characters.

Tools - there are password tools out there that help you generate and save. Never use the same password for multiple accounts, and for sensitive accounts like financial, social media email, etc make a habit of changing every 3 months. Even the best password can be stolen during a greater security breach during a hackers efforts to steal large swaths of data/info.