When I meet new customers, I often notice that their password management could use a little help. I’d like to share some thoughts about how to keep your passwords – and your online presence – secure.
A strong password is your first line of defence against cyber threats. But let’s be honest: managing multiple complex passwords can be overwhelming. Many people resort to storing their passwords in a Word document named passwords.docx. While it might seem convenient, it’s also risky. What happens if that file gets stolen, or you lose it due to a system crash?
I want to keep this a short read for you, so I’ll cover two important topics as quickly as I can.
- Checking if your email address or password has been compromised.
- Creating fantastic password hygiene.
Checking if your email address or password has been compromised.
Your data is valuable to you. It’s also valuable to those who would want to exploit it for financial gain. They will try to get hold of your username, email address, or password by various nefarious means. It might be by using a ‘phishing attack’ where they will target you with bogus emails, or they may attempt to gain direct access to the servers and computers holding your account details.
Unfortunately, from time to time they are successful.
The good news is that there a tools out there which we can use to alert us in the event that our account information is compromised.
Each of these services allow you to enter your email address, and they will then scan their database to see if it has been listed in a data breach. If it has, then you should If it has, then you should immediately change that password and enable two-factor authentication.
Creating fantastic password hygiene
Having fantasic password hygiene means that for each and every account you have, there is unique and strong password. This might feel overwhelming. To give myself peace of mind, I use two tools:
KeePass
With KeePass, you can
- Generate strong, unique passwords for every account.
- Store passwords securely, accessible only to you.
- Autofill your credentials securely into login forms.I personally use KeePassXC, a version of KeePass that includes browser integration, making it even easier to manage passwords seamlessly.
- Create a One Time Password – A single use password used in two-factor authentication.
Using Dropbox or a similar service, you can access your passwords on any device.
Apple Passwords
“Passwords” is an app which is built into the Apple’s iOS, iPadOS and MacOS operating systems. It’s syncs via iCloud so all your passwords are available to all your devices which are signed into that iCloud account.
As well as all the benefits of KeePass it also:
- Automatically syncs your credentials to iCloud
- Notifies you of any security issues with your passwords; have they been breached or reused.
- Securely share a password with a trusted person – I’m 100% against sharing account passwords. But what this does allow you to is to create a unique password for someone else, and then share that securely.
Let’s do this!
Book a free session with me today using this appointment link. We will look a couple of online tools to make sure that your credentials are safe. We will then set-up a password management tool for you so you have peace of mind that you are as safe as you can be online.
You will need a good internet connection, and have access to a cloud storage solution such as Dropbox.
