Quickly generating a password from a dictionary word (easy but not so secure)

So, your requirements are set as:

1. Needs Uppercase letter,
2. Needs lowercase letter,
3. Needs digit,
4. Needs length > 8 characters,
5. and there are simple Checks for your Name as a substring,
6. Should Not match previous 5..n passwords.

Let's l33t-ize it:

1. Grab a dictionary word, at least 7 chars long, which has at least one vowel, and has at least one uppercase letter in it, that feels natural for you. Eg. "Bracket"
2. l33t-ize the vowels, except the first letter. Eg. "Bracket" --> "Br4ck3t"
3. Find the biggest digit. Zero counts as the biggest. Eg. "Br4ck3t" ==> 4
4. Append this digit, `digit` times to the end. Zero means ten. Eg. "Br4ck3t" + 4 --> "Br4ck3t4444"
5. Now, you have +uppercase, +lowercase, +digits, +length()>8

Examples:

Dog --> D0g0000000000 (D0g and 10 zeroes)
Obama --> Ob4m44444 (Ob4m4 [left the big-o as the uppercase!!!] and 4 fours)
Keyboard --> K3yb04rd0000000000 (K3yb04rd and ten zeroes)

Variations:

• Full-l33t: also translate s-5, t-| (pipe/bar), small-L-1
• Let zero be zero and it means no new digits at the end

Do not forget, which variation are you using ;-)

It's not the best, but if you still have to change yoour password in every few months, I could go with this. Otherwise, they should introduce smartcards and/or SecurID tokens...