

three) of failed password entry attempts. Some systems impose a time-out of several seconds after a small number (e.g. The rate at which an attacker can submit guessed passwords to the system is a key factor in determining system security. The first factor is the main focus in this article. The effectiveness of a password of a given strength is strongly determined by the design and implementation of the authentication factors (knowledge, ownership, inherence). Using strong passwords lowers overall risk of a security breach, but strong passwords do not replace the need for other effective security controls. The strength of a password is a function of length, complexity, and unpredictability. In its usual form, it estimates how many trials an attacker who does not have direct access to the password would need, on average, to guess it correctly. Password strength is a measure of the effectiveness of a password against guessing or brute-force attacks. Enabling more character subsets raises the strength of generated passwords a small amount, whereas increasing their length raises the strength a large amount. Options menu of the random password generation tool in KeePass.
