How to Best Manage Passwords
By
dwest
/ April 27, 2020 February 8, 2021
How to Best Manage Passwords
The average person can have nearly 100 passwords (or more!) when combining professional and personal accounts and services. That is a lot to remember! Many often use the same email and password for many (if not all) accounts, so they have less to remember. This is the number one liability for accounts online: password reuse.
If a popular streaming service suffers a security breach, you may not be too concerned with someone watching a show on your account. However, if your log in information for this service is the same for your banking or other sensitive accounts, the damage can be much more severe. When sites suffer a breach, the hackers immediately try those credentials on banking, email and other sites to see how many areas they can log into with one password. So, it is vitally important to have a different password for every account. In addition, to be really secure, your passwords should all be at least 15 characters (some cybersecurity analysts recommend 25 characters.)
How is it humanly possible to remember up to 100 unique lengthy passwords? It’s not! That’s where password managers come into play. A password manager will become your best friend, because it takes care of three critical tasks for you:
- It generates lengthy, complex passwords for each of your accounts or logins
- It stores these complex passwords in a digital “vault”
- It automatically fills in this complex password every time you log into a site