Why you should use a password
manager
19
JUL 2016
Maria Varmazis nakedsecurity.sophos.com
For years, I read
many, many articles about password managers – much like this one – and despite
the fact that I’ve been working in the information security field for about a
decade, I still resisted trying them out. It seemed like a lot of hassle, and
who needs more of that?
Instead, I
kept an arsenal of passwords in my head: A few “disposable” ones for sites
I didn’t care much about that I reused constantly, a couple other slightly-more
complicated passwords that I used more sparingly, and for a few really
crucial sites (mainly financial ones) I had long, complex, and unique passwords
that I managed to remember due to sheer repetition and stubbornness.
While on a long
vacation abroad a few years ago, I found myself needing to
send an urgent message to family, and my email account was one of
those accounts using a long, complex password. Since it had been several weeks
since I’d logged in, no matter what I tried I just could not remember my
password. I tried to log in so many times I locked myself out of my account.
Mea
culpa.
When I got back from
my trip, I knew it was time to stop this madness and use a password manager for
once and for all. Now I’ve been using a password manager for several
years, I can’t imagine still trying to juggle a few weak passwords in my
head.
If my story about
juggling a few sets of passwords in your head sounds familiar, I’m here to
convince you to take the plunge and use a password manager once and for all.
Here’s why:
They’re simple to set
up and easy to use
Before using my first
password manager, I imagined I’d have to sit down for hours in front of a big
spreadsheet, recounting every username and password for every website I
frequent. Nobody would look forward to that kind of chore.
Thankfully that’s not
how it works. Password managers work to capture your existing username and
password credentials the first time it sees you enter them on a website, and
then it stores them in a secure password vault for recall next time. The idea
is that the only password you’ll ever have to remember once you set up a
password manager is the vault’s master password.
As you go about your
business online – for example, as you log in to your email account – the
password manager will notice that you’ve typed in some credentials and will
offer to save them in the password vault for you. Next time you log in, the
password manager will enter your credentials for you automatically, easy as
that.
And when you change
your account’s password, which you really should if it’s one you’ve reused
somewhere, the password manager will detect the change and update the password
on file for you.
They make sure your
passwords are unique and strong
I
can’t emphasize it enough: you really should be using unique, strong passwords on all
websites you use. Why? When a site gets hacked, hackers will often
take the credential data they’ve mined – usernames and passwords – and try that
data out on other websites to break in to accounts there, too. Sadly, it
works because so many people reuse credential information across many
websites. (You can check to see if your information has been
used in an attack like this via haveibeenpwned.com.)
But as services
online proliferate, creating – let alone remembering – a unique
password for every single one becomes practically impossible.
Thankfully, password managers can step in and help here by generating unique
passwords for you.
A strong* password
should be of decent length, contain a good mix of upper and lowercase letters,
numbers, and unique characters. That means a good password could look something
like this: Vp$lskFOyS4h^oqI.
It’s hard enough to
try and think of dozens of passwords that look like that, let alone trying to
remember them. Thankfully, the password manager takes care of both of
these tasks for you.
So in the worst-case
scenario, if your account is involved in a website breach, if you’re using a
unique password, the hacker only gets access to that one account, not a
treasure trove of all your other ones.
Seriously, you can’t
remember all those passwords
When you use a
password manager, your passwords can be mobile yet still secure. Most password
managers allow you to sync your account from multiple machines (so you can have
access at your home and work computers, for example). Others in
addition offer a phone app (LastPass), or for you to export your
encrypted key information to a secure file or to a USB key (KeePass) –
either option allows you to access your secure password vault while on the go.
One of my favorite use
cases is for securely sharing credentials to an account used by trusted
parties. For example, while my spouse and I both have our own personal
password manager accounts that we keep private, we can opt to share
specific credential sets between our two accounts so we can both securely
access them, and keep those credentials synced.
This makes things like
accessing the monthly electricity bill or joint banking accounts much,
much easier. Plus, if one of us changes the password to one of these
shared accounts, since the password manager keeps track of the changes we
both automatically have the updated credentials.
It
might make you feel a bit wary to have all your passwords stored in one central
place, but any password manager worth its salt uses heavy-duty
encryption to keep your information safe. In addition, many offer two-factor authentication (2FA)!
Ready to try a
password manager? Great!
If
I’ve convinced you to give a password manager a try, the best way to get
started is to dive right in. Most have a free version you can use, with some
premium features you have to pay to unlock. Below are the four I’m
most familiar with, but there are a lot of options available to you.
·
1Password
·
Dashlane
·
LastPass
·
KeePass
So how about it, are you going to give a
password manager a try or are you still not convinced? Are you already a
password manager fan?
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