Best Practices for Internet Passwords

An Internet Banking password is used to access your On-Line Banking and Bill Pay information.  The following guidelines can assist you in creating a 'Strong' password to protect you and your on-line accounts.

Strong passwords have the following characteristics:

  • Contain both upper and lower case characters (e.g., a-z, A-Z)
  • Have digits and punctuation characters as well as letters, e.g., 0-9, !@#$%^&*()_+|~-=\`{}[]:";'<>?,./)
  • Are at least eight alphanumeric characters long
  •  Are not a word in any language, slang, dialect, jargon, etc.
  • Are not based on personal information, names of family, etc.
  • Passwords should never be written down or stored online. Try to create passwords that can be easily remembered. One way to do this is create a password based on a song title, affirmation, or other phrase. For example, the phrase might be: "This May Be One Way To Remember" and the password could be: "TmB1w2R!" or "Tmb1W>r~" or some other variation.

Note: Do not use either of these examples as passwords.

HCB Password Standards

  • Passwords must be at least 8 characters long.
  • Passwords require at least 1 upper case letter, 1 lower case letter, and 1 number or special character.
  • The special characters allowed are ! @ # $ % ^ * ( or ).
  • Accounts will become inactive after 60 days if not used.