“As researchers into password security, we’ve known for years that most password advice was not actually based on scientific knowledge,” says CyLab’s Lorrie Cranor, Lujo Bauer, and Nicholas Christin in an article for The Conversation. “To address this, we have been conducting experiments about the effects of password requirements on security and usability.” Cranor, Bauer, Christin, and their colleagues from the University of Maryland and the University of Chicago say that users need to go beyond creating passwords that are merely “hard to guess.” To defend themselves against hackers, they must now create passwords that are difficult for computers to figure out.