Password Managers

by Julian Labuschagne

June 27, 2017

We hear it spoken, we read it in articles, we are told on a regular basis that we must not use the same password for each site, service or application we are using.

The reason for this is that if someone could guess or steal your password you use for your email for example they could then access your online banking and social media accounts or even worse it could aid criminals in stealing your identity.

Imagine if your car key could be used to open all the locks at your house and workplace if someone stole only that one key they would have access to all the rooms in your home and office!

It is very important that you never use the same password twice and never use a easy to guess password.

What makes a good password?

A good password should always consist of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers and special characters and should at least be 12 characters long.

Example:

4^%AYh9Z@zUe

The problem is strong passwords are difficult to remember and managing many unique passwords for different apps, services and websites can be overwhelming and tedious.

The Solution

Lucky for us there are a few applications that can help us with the task of creating and storing our secure passwords.

I will be discussing two applications Keepass which is a Open Source standalone software application and LastPass which is a web service.

Keepass

After installing Keepass you can create a database which is encrypted, this means it would be extremely difficult to look at the contents of the file without entering password.

After you have created your database file and set your password you can create a new entry for each website, service or application you need and generate a secure and unique password.

Each entry allows you to save the following information:

• Title: Used to identify your entry in a list.
• User name: The username that you use for this entry.
• Password: The password.
• URL: The web url for a website login page.
• Notes: Can be used to store any additional information that might be useful to remember.

All the entries can be neatly organised in groups to make it easier to find your usernames and passwords that has been stored into entries.

It also provides means to search through your entries and copy usernames, paswwords and URLs to the clipboard for each entry.

LastPass

Before you use LastPass you must first got to the LasPass website and create a free account.

You can then use LastPass by installing a browser plugin for Chrome, Firefox or Safari there is also apps available in the Appstore for iOS, Google Play Store for Android and Windows Store for Windows phone, You will need a paid subscription to use the mobile apps. You will also need to login with your LastPass user credentials.

LastPass can be used to generate and store your usernames and passwords in your vault.

You can add a site that allows you to save the following information:

• URL: The web url for a website login page.
• Name: Used to identify the LastPass entry in your Vault.
• Username: The username for this entry.
• Password: The password.
• Notes: Can be used to store any additional information that might be useful to remember.

There are also entries called secure notes which can be used to store other types of sensitive data which is not necesarily a website.

Lastpass is integrated with your browser so it can automaticaly log you into most websites and store account information after you have logged in.

Conclusion

There are obviously many other solutions out there but Keepass and LastPass are the two password managers which I am the most familiar with because I have personal experience with them.

The important thing to remember is choose one difficult password to memorize and use that as your master password and make sure no one else has access to it.

Whichever solution you choose is up to you and what you feel most comfortable using. If you know of good solutions of managing your account credentials and passwords please let us know on our Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIN accounts.

For more information have a look at this article from PCMag and of course the LastPass and Keepass websites.