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So, how many post-it notes do you have plastered all over your computer screen to remind you
of your passwords? Or instead do you put them in your diary, that one you always carry around?
My name's Mark Edmunds and password's are the bane of our lives..... website logins,
hosting logins, emails accounts, social media accounts, Window's logins, banking systems
.... the list goes on and on. And we all know it's bad practise to use the
same password on all your systems. So what's the answer?
As I am responsible for the security on many systems I have my own password management
system. The first rule of my system is that I never
store or write any password down in plain English for anyone to read.
Second, I make up a secure password consisting of a combination of words and numbers. These
words and numbers have some kind of association to the system the password is for that would
be very difficult for anyone else to guess but easy for me to remember.
Third, if I want to make a note of the password then I create a cryptic reminder which will
give me a clue what the password is. Fourth, I never use the same password on two
systems. And finally, I frequently change the critical
passwords. Now, though this is reasonably secure system,
it is a pain to keep track of. Especially when you have dozens of passwords to remember.
So a more secure method is to use a password management system such as KeePass or RoboForm.
Not only do these programs remember your passwords, but they also remember your username, the
site URL and can generate very random passwords for you to use.
RoboForm has the advantage of being a cloud based system which means you can access your
passwords from all your devices at any time. KeePass only works on your PC however is completely
under your control and not cloud based so potentially more secure.
Regarding security, remember that when using any password management system, your passwords
are only as safe as the master password -- so make sure it is really secure and really difficult
to guess. Also in the case of RoboForm, I recommend
only use it on computers and Internet connections you trust and for KeePass, make sure you keep
backups of the .kdbx file it creates (one simple way of doing this is keeping it in
a dropbox folder). How do you remember all your passwords?