What’s a Brute Force Attack?

GPU Speeds Brute Force Attempts:
Tons of computer brainpower is needed to run brute force password software. Unfortunately, hackers have worked out hardware solutions to make this part of the job a lot easier.
Combining the CPU and graphics processing unit (GPU) accelerates computing power. By adding the thousands of computing cores in the GPU for processing, this enables the system to handle multiple tasks at once. GPU processing is used for analytics, engineering, and other computingintensive applications. Hackers using this method can crack passwords about 250 times faster than a CPU alone.
So, how long would it take to crack a password? To put it in perspective, a six-character password that includes numbers has approximately 2 billion possible combinations. Cracking it with a powerful CPU that tries 30 passwords per second takes more than two years. Adding a single, powerful GPU card lets the same computer test 7,100 passwords per second and cracks the password in 3.5 days.
Steps to Protect Passwords for Professionals:
To keep yourself and your network safe, you’ll want to take your precautions and help others do so as well. User behavior and network security systems will both need reinforcement.
For IT specialists and users alike, you’ll want to take a few general pieces of advice to heart:
Use an advanced username and password. Protect yourself with credentials that are stronger than admin and password1234 to keep out these attackers. The stronger this combination is, the harder it will be for anyone to penetrate it. 
Remove any unused accounts with high-level permissions. These are the cyber equivalent of doors with weak locks that make breaking in easy. Unmaintained accounts are a vulnerability you can’t risk. Throw them away as soon as possible.
Passive Backend Protections for Passwords:
High encryption rates: to make it harder for brute force attacks to succeed, system administrators should ensure that passwords for their systems are encrypted with the highest encryption rates possible, such as 256-bit encryption. The more bits in the encryption scheme, the harder the password is to crack.
Salt the hash: administrators should also randomize password hashes by adding a random string of letters and numbers (called salt) to the password itself. This string should be stored in a separate database and retrieved and added to the password before it’s hashed. By salting the hash, users with the same password have different hashes.