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Security Challenge
Passwords are a part of our daily lives and we have so many of them. It’s important that we have good password hygiene and it doesn’t have to be hard.
Recommendation
The easiest way to create strong passwords is to not rely on your memory and to use a secure and trusted password manager. Password managers store your passwords in an encrypted vault on your computer, smartphone or tablet and you are the only one who can access the saved credentials with your password. This makes it so you only need to remember one password, the vault password, instead of 200+ passwords for the various sites and applications you use.
A good simple password manager should:
Store your credentials securely using the current strongest encryption.
Allow you to generate strong passwords.
Be from a trusted vendor or community.
I’ve personally used Lastpass, 1password, and Keepass and would recommend all of them. I recommend you choose a password manager that is the best fit for you. Below are some questions to ask yourself that should help determine which password manager to use.
Questions
- Am I willing to pay for service or do I prefer free?
- Do I need to have access to my passwords across multiple devices and operating systems? (e.g., Windows, Apple, Android)
- If yes, Do I want to handle my own syncing or let someone else do it?
- Do I need to be able to securely share passwords with family and friends?
Closing Thoughts
For an easy password manager that checks all the boxes above I recommend LastPass. LastPass is a trusted vendor with a good security program that includes yearly audits from 3rd party vendors. I’m not at all affiliated with LastPass but I love the software and even recommend it to my family members. LastPass did recently limit their free tier plan but the premium fee is only $3 a month and worth it in my opinion. I pay for the Family plan which is $4 a month and gives you up to 6 licenses. If you don’t have $3 a month but would like to have all of the features that were originally in the free tier, I recommend bitwarden. They are also well known and have a good security program. I’ve just started to use them and like it so far.
Using a password manager will help you focus less on remembering and more on making sure you use strong and unique passwords for each site and applications you use.