Security Tip: Password Management

Most people recommend using different passwords for all the sites and items that require passwords.  I also find that most people in corporate and home environments alike tend to find managing all these passwords cumbersome.  Therefore – most people tend to come up with a small set of user name and password combinations that they use for virtually everything.   I can really understand how having a single password or a small series of password you use for everything would ease the burden of accessing all your resources but the fact remains that you become much more vulnerable to hacks.

For me I would have to remember passwords for:

• 3 Banks.
• 1 Credit card.
• 2 Student loans.
• 2 Blogs.
• 5 Email accounts (I do not use some of these).
• 1 Auto insurance company.
• 1 Web hosting provider.
• 1 Corporate network.
• 3 work related web sites I use daily.
• The list goes on… and on…

I am fairly lucky as I have an easy time remembering passwords (the CFO of a company I used to work for equated me to Rain Main once due to my ability to remember passwords and email addresses).  The fact is that I do keep a hard copy of my personal passwords around just in case as well as keep track of my reset options.  For those of you that would like to work on becoming more secure there are several tools out there to assist with password management:

• Roboform Password Manager & Form Filler: It costs about $30 but you get a bit of extra functionality with it (like form filling).
• The Best Little E-Mail Address & Password Organizer: For those that prefer the hand written method and want something beyond a basic notebook.
• Keepass Password Safe: If all you want is password management then this tool is free and works well.  I use this application personally.  There are also a number of plug-ins available for Keepass that will allow you to pass your passwords through to web pages.
• Password Safe: Another easy to use and free password management application.  I have limited experience with this application but do not believe that it has the ability to pass through to web forms like KeePass.

So please – keep in mind that you can keep track of your passwords easily by using some extra software and most of them support browser integration (which makes sign on a breeze).  If you have not done so yet – I encourage you to give it a shot and see if you can in fact use different passwords for all of your different requirements.