What if everything you think you know about passwords is wrong? Here’s what really makes a strong password in 2026

February 1 was National Change Your Password Day, a well-intentioned reminder that, ironically, highlights everything wrong with how we think about security in 2026.

Here’s the truth: if you spent the first day of the month dutifully changing “Summer2025!” to “Winter2026!” across your accounts, you didn’t make yourself safer. In fact, you might have made things worse.

Decades of Bad Advice

We’ve spent decades teaching people the wrong lessons about password security. Add a number. Throw in a special character. Change it every 90 days. These requirements were etched into our collective consciousness, repeated by IT departments, enforced by login forms, and internalized by millions of users who thought they were doing the right thing.

Meanwhile, the actual threat landscape evolved in an entirely different direction. Today’s attackers aren’t sitting at keyboards manually typing password guesses. They’re running offline brute force attacks with dedicated GPU rigs that can attempt 100 billion passwords per second against hashing algorithms like MD5 or SHA-1. At that speed, your clever substitution of “@” for “a” buys you microseconds of additional security.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which sets the gold standard for cybersecurity guidance, understands the new reality. Their latest digital identity guidelines represent a fundamental shift in how we should think about password security, and it’s not what most people expect.

Length Beats Complexity Every Time

NIST’s guidance is refreshingly straightforward. Length matters far more than complexity. A password should be at least 15 characters, but those characters don’t need to be a cryptic jumble of symbols that you’ll inevitably forget (or worse, write on a sticky note).

Instead, NIST endorses the concept of “passphrases” or multiple words strung together that are easy to remember but difficult to guess. “DontAskMeToChangeMyPassword” is more secure than “P@ssw0rd!” and infinitely easier to recall.

Even more surprising to many, NIST no longer recommends requiring special characters or numbers, and they’ve abandoned the practice of forcing regular password changes. Why? Because these rules don’t make passwords more secure—they just make them harder for humans to manage, which leads to predictable workarounds that actually weaken security.

Passwords Are the Problem, Not the Solution

But here’s where NIST’s guidance gets really interesting. They acknowledge that even the strongest password is fundamentally insecure. Phishing attacks don’t care how long your password is. Data breaches expose credentials regardless of complexity. And with over 3,000 data breaches in 2025 alone, the question isn’t whether your password has been compromised—it’s how many times.

NIST’s primary recommendation isn’t about crafting the perfect password. It’s about moving beyond passwords entirely.

They emphasize multifactor authentication (MFA) as essential, not optional. They champion passkeys—cryptographic keys stored on your devices that can’t be phished, guessed, or stolen in database breaches. They endorse password managers that generate and store unique credentials for every account.

Organizations are realizing that the password is the problem, not the solution. Passwordless authentication isn’t a futuristic concept anymore. It’s a practical necessity for companies serious about security and user experience.

What You Should Actually Do

If you must use passwords (and let’s be honest, you probably still need them for many accounts), follow NIST’s guidance. Make them long, use a password manager, and enable MFA everywhere it’s available. Better yet, embrace passkeys when offered—they’re more secure and more convenient than any password could ever be.

But the real question isn’t “how do I create a better password?” It’s “why am I still relying on passwords at all?”

Instead of changing your password on National Change Your Password Day, why not change your entire approach to authentication?

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