It seems that almost every site on the Web requires a password. At least twice a week, I get an email from someone who wants me to join yet another site, which requires yet another username and password.
You can cop out and use the same username and password combination, but that’s always possible since some sites let you use numbers and symbols in your password and some don’t, or the user name you want may be taken. Besides that’s just asking for trouble. If you use the same password for your banking account, Gmail account, and your medical account you are leaving yourself open to exposure—if one account ends up getting hacked, all those accounts could be hacked.
But how do you manage all those user names and passwords without having a cheat sheet in a file on your computer or stuck on post-it notes next to your computer? Neither option provides the security you should reserve for passwords.
The key to surviving this is to make a small investment in a password management service that stores your passwords on a security-restricted site that you can access from any device as long as you have an Internet connection. The best thing about a password manager is that you ultimately have just the one master password to remember, which gets you access to all the different passwords for each site.
Password managers also allow you to instantly create secure and complex passwords for each of your accounts, so that you don’t end up using the same one for every account. Usually trying to create complex passwords can be tiresome and it isn’t easily remembering them all, but with a password manager it remembers all your passwords for you.
You might ask how having one password manager that holds the “key” to all my user names and passwords safe? Well it’s much safer than what you’re most likely using today and most of these password managers utilize a high-level of encryption that can’t easily be cracked.
The real security vulnerability is with your own computer and devices and any existing or future malware that it may have that could record your keystrokes or take screenshots. To prevent this, you need to make sure you have a clean device and run scans on a regular basis.
Never forget your passwords again with McAfee SafeKey password manager tool. McAfee SafeKey is available with McAfee All Access and it securely stores your usernames and passwords for your favorite sites, and logs in for you—with just one click. And it works and syncs across all your PC, Mac, iPhone or Android devices.
Robert Siciliano is an Online Security Expert to McAfee. Disclosures.