Everyone knows, either in the front or back of their mind, a password should be secure. Of course, some passwords are naturally more important than others, for example your online banking credentials are much more important than those of a message board you might only visit once in a while.

For important passwords, it is a very good idea to use a strong password. A seemingly random sequence of characters which is meaningful (for lack of better words) is the best approach. This article on Microsoft gives great suggestions for creating a secure password. I took several things from it:

Avoid using only look-alike substitutions of numbers or symbols. Criminals and other malicious users who know enough to try and crack your password will not be fooled by common look-alike replacements, such as to replace an ‘i’ with a ‘1′ or an ‘a’ with ‘@’ as in “M1cr0$0ft” or “P@ssw0rd”. But these substitutions can be effective when combined with other measures, such as length, misspellings, or variations in case, to improve the strength of your password.

The section titled “Create a strong, memorable password in 6 steps” I found most helpful and used the techniques to sure up some of my more important passwords.