Can anyone realistically remember ALL their passwords?? There are many many sites we need to have credentials for and remember them. Your bank, other financial institutes, your doctor’s office, your email, on and on. Should you use the same password on all of them? Obviously not! The reason is clear on that. Sites require you to use complex passwords with minimum password length, upper/lower case, special characters, numbers and more. How can you even come up with passwords to meet all these requirements? It is impossible and honestly, not sustainable.
I know many people who write ALL their passwords on sticky notes, notepads, notes or any text applications on their phone or computer. Imagine what happens when their computer gets hacked or stolen? Not even that, if their computer crashes. Scary thought, isn’t it? How about saving your passwords in your browser? Another very bad idea. So, what is the answer? What is the best password to use you may ask?
The best password is a password that you don’t even know what it is!
Huh? Come again? Let me explain:
You should use Password Manager tools!
It is easy to remember one password and that’s all we need to remember, just a single password. Make this password long and complex (don’t use your spouse’s name or kids’ birthday, etc.) and make sure to remember it. Next use that complex password and use it as your main “Vault” password. This is your master key to the vault. All other passwords are saved securely inside this vault.
When you visit a website, the address of the website is recognized by password management tool and your credentials are automatically inserted in. Voila! You are in. Not only that, when you are creating a new account on any website, let the password manager come up with a very complex password and fill it in for you. Don’t even bother remembering that password as it will be saved inside the vault. Who needs to remember these passwords? On top of that, you can also save your other personal information inside your vault such as your credit card numbers, bank accounts, etc. and securely retrieve them when needed. Isn’t that convenient?
My personal favorite Password Manager is LastPass. While there are a good handful of password managers in the market, I have found LastPass to be easy to use and free for personal use. I use it both for my business and personal use for many years now. Have not had any issues with it. Same app is available for PC, MAC and Mobile devices.
Just a side note that if you forget your master password, there would be no way to reset it or retrieve it, period! A copy of your master password is never saved anywhere on your local machine or in the cloud. The data inside your vault is encrypted with that password and you will not be able to get your data back if you forget your password. You should also enable 2FA (Two Factor Authentication) for your Master password.
We at IT21ST have been helping our customers with their Data Security for many years and can help you as well. Our IT Support services cover Greater Los Angeles and beyond.
