The Importance of Password Protection

Beginning August 1, SFB online and mobile banking account passwords are required to increase to a minimum of 14 characters upon the expiration of your current password. The change will allow for increased security of your banking account.

Creating strong passwords for your online accounts helps to protect your online information from cyber-attacks or data theft. Shorter passwords are easier to crack and can be guessed by hackers with brute force. A brute force attack is an illegal attempt of using several repetitive trial-and-error attempts to guess the password to a website or service. By creating a password with a minimum of 14 letters, this hacking attempt is more difficult to crack.

The graphic below shows how long it takes hackers to crack passwords with brute force based on their strength. (Graphic Provided by Hive Systems)

If 14-character passwords with at least one upper case letter, one lower case letter, a number and a special character seem overwhelming, try a passphrase instead of a password. Passphrases can be easier to remember than a random variation of the required characters.

For example:

SFBis#1 - too short and easy to crack

S3cur!tyF!n@nc!@lB@nk - long enough, but hard to type and remember

Thebankthatbelieves1934! - long and memorable

*Do not use these passwords, they are just examples.

Finally, make sure to store your password in a safe place where you can reference it when needed but somewhere no one else can access. We recommend using a password manager, which is a service that generates and stores passwords to all your accounts in one place.

If you have any questions, please contact Customer Service at 888-254-0615, customerservice@sfbank.com, or send a message through our mobile app or online banking website.