What makes a strong banking password?

Our requirements

• At least 12 characters.
• Upper case, lower case, a number and a symbol.
• Not a password you have used on this account before.

What actually keeps you safe

1. Make it unique. Most account takeovers happen because a password leaked from an unrelated website was reused here. Your banking password must exist nowhere else.
2. Make it long. Four or five unrelated words are easy to remember and far harder to crack than a short string of symbols.
3. Use a password manager. It generates and stores a different strong password for every site, so you only remember one.
4. Never reuse the pattern. Adding "1", "2", "!" to the same base word is treated as the same password by attackers.

Avoid

Names of family, pets or your employer; your date of birth; your address; and anything visible on your social media. Attackers research targets before they guess.

Change your password immediately if you have used it elsewhere, if a site you use has been breached, or if anyone has watched you type it.