Is there an easy way to create a strong and effective password?

First you can think of a phrase or sentence that has meaning to you and that you can remember; for example:

-I went to Emerald Isle and stayed for seven days!

Second you can replace any words that are numbers with the actual numbers, replace certain words like "to" that sound like numbers with the number they sound like, and any word that can be represented by a symbol with that symbol. Making these changes in the above phrase the result would look like:

-I went 2 Emerald Isle and stayed 4 7 days!

Third you can take the first letter of each word and each number or symbol from step 2 and combine them into a string that would look like:

-Iw2EI&s47d!

Looking back at the orginal phrase you can see:

-I went to Emerald Isle and stayed for seven days!

"I" did not change, "went" is represented by the first letter or the word "w", "to" is represented by the number "2", "Emerald Isle" is represented by "EI", the word "and" is represented by the symbol "&" , the word "stayed" is represented by the letter "s", the word "for" is represented by the number "4", "seven" is represented by the number "7", "days" is represented by the letter "d", and the exclamation mark is kept at the end of the phrase "!".

The replacement of elements from this easy to remember sentence results in this strong password:

-Iw2EI&s47d!

Following this process should allow you to easily create a password that will not be difficult to remember, but that will meet all of the UNC password requirements. Here are some common mappings of words to symbols:

"and" = "&"

"at" = "@"

"ate" = "8"

"bang" = "!"

"for" = "4"

"percent" = "%"

"to" = "2"