10/04/2024
📧 We all must use login credentials — usernames and passwords — for email and cloud service accounts, social media logins, banking and investment websites, online stores and most service providers’ portals and apps, including those dealing with our medical information.
ℹ️ A recent Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report surveyed 20,000 breaches and found that in 50% of the cases the cybercriminals gained access utilizing stolen user credentials.
❌ Using the same password for more than one website, though tempting, was never a good idea because if hackers gain your password to one website, they will likely try that password for your other logins.
❗️ Keeping your most important passwords on sticky notes on or near your computer is also risky because those passwords could be seen by whoever has access to your desk. Just remember all those cop shows and thrillers!
Family members or work teammates may need to access certain shared accounts, but sharing passwords via email is a major no-no because email messages can travel unencrypted over the Internet, and therefore hackers can easily read them.
❓ So what option is left?
✅ A password manager can help.
A password manager uses an encrypted vault to safely store and organize your login information for various platforms and services. After you start using a password manager, you only need to remember one password, to the password manager itself. Your master password gives you access to all the passwords you have saved in your password manager. As you browse the World Wide Web, as soon as you click on a login box on a website on which you already have an account, your password manager offers to enter your previously saved username and password.
Crucially, you should be able to utilize the same password manager in all your browsers, across all of your devices, instead of saving passwords in many different places. This way, if you decide to change your password for a given website or service, you will only have to change it in your password manager.
⏰ You can save a lot of time by using a password manager to enter your login credentials automatically. This increased efficiency effect is multiplied in a business setting, where a centrally administered password manager application helps many employees access a multitude of resources faster, on a need-to-know basis.
A password manager can also generate new passwords for you. It allows you to adjust the password length and automatically proposes unique character strings made up of digits, special characters and upper and lowercase letters.
A good password manager will also alert you when one of your passwords is too weak or too old.
👉 Contact Marcin Żmudzki if you need any help choosing and implementing a password management solution. You can call or text him at +1 (202) 421-6172 or email him at [email protected]. You can also write to us here via Facebook Messenger. We’re here to help!
Image by storyset on Freepik
