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Password hardening refers to any technique or technology through which a password is made to be more difficult to be breached, guessed, or exploited by a hacker, cracker, or any other individual with malicious intent. It enables creating a password or password policy that eventually ensures enhanced security of the underlying device, network, or application.
Techopedia Explains Password Hardening
Password hardening primarily enables adding security tools and techniques beyond standard password creation and management processes.
There are several techniques for password hardening, such as:
- Enforcing users to add special characters or capitalized (Upper Case) alphabets within their password
- Restricting users to use their name or easily guessable words or numbers combination in the password
- Using multi-factor authentication mechanisms along with the password, such as by adding biometric security (as commonly seen with password managers) or smart-card-based access besides the password
- On-screen scrambled or standard keyboard that requires users to click the characters of the password rather than typing it manually
