Manage Your Passwords and Never Worry About Forgetting Them Again

As children, many of us were delighted by the story of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Most children are especially awestruck by the part where the cavern housing the thieves' horde of treasure is magically revealed with the utterance of a magical phrase. What power there was in those two simple words: Open Sesame! Now, as adults, we have the power to use our own versions of that early password to unlock email accounts, banking, online shopping, and a seeming multitude of other applications at home and work.

Just as was the case in the story of Ali Baba, the passwords we use are not providing the level of security we hope they are. Mostly, it's our own fault. We've become rather complacent about password security and often feel overwhelmed with the constant prompting to create passwords to do nearly everything online.

Why Are Passwords Such a Problem?

According to a 2017 report from LastPass, 81% of confirmed data breaches are due to passwords. The report also revealed that the average business employee must keep track of 191 passwords. That sounds like a lot of passwords to keep track of so how do people do it?

AntiVirus Software provider McAfee did a survey that revealed 37% of respondents track their passwords the old-fashioned way, saying they keep a list of all their passwords on paper, which they keep someplace considered safe.

Sadly, 34% of the respondents admitted to using a more traditional, and much less secure, approach for storing passwords, which is to simply reuse the same passwords across multiple accounts. How many of us can admit to committing that sin out of frustration or convenience?

A Simple Solution: Password Managers

There is a glimmer of hope. A smaller number of the McAfee survey's respondents (20%) reported using some form of a password manager. What's a password manager? We're glad you asked.

Password managers help you with the difficult task of, well...managing your passwords. They help you create and store passwords complex passwords that stymie hackers and bots who are trying to uncover your own personal Open Sesame. Password managers have multiple layers of encryption to ensure the security of your passwords and can log you into websites automatically with multi-factor authentication.

There are a variety of password managers to choose from offering various package levels ranging from free to paid subscriptions. A free plan may be all you need, or you may decide a paid plan has the features and bandwidth that suit you best. Given all that's at stake in keeping your entire digital life secure, we're sure you'll find using a password manager is a wise choice. One we often recommend to clients, which we have been using for several years, is Passpack. It does everything we need including allowing the members of our team to share passwords for accounts that multiple people require access to.

What Makes a Powerful Password?

If you don't feel like splurging on a password manager you can still lock down your digital life with stronger passwords. Here are a few tips on how to create strong passwords:

• Use a Minimum 12 Characters: Lengthier passwords are better. There’s no minimum password length as a standard, but you should make it your practice to choose passwords of a minimum of 12 to 14 characters in length.
• Where Possible Use Numbers, Symbols, Upper and Lower-Case Letters: By using a combination of different types of characters you'll make your password harder to crack.
• Don't Choose a Dictionary Word or Combination of Words: Avoid obvious dictionary words and combinations. Any word on its own is too simple. Combinations of even a few words, particularly obvious ones, are bad as well. An example of a terrible single word password would be “house”. The combination “Red house” isn't much better.
• Don’t Choose Obvious Substitutions: Choosing common substitutions, such as, “H0use” isn’t strong enough. Simply replacing an o for a 0 is way too obvious.
• Use a Password Generator: Create complex passwords with sites like Secure Password Generator or the built-in password generators in browsers like Chrome and Safari.

You can find out more about passwords and password security at the World Password Day site. Then make the above tips part of your regular password creation practice or, better yet, use a password manager, and you'll be able keep Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves out of your own personal cavern of digital treasures.