Welcome to the 2nd in a long series of informative and helpful tips to keep you, your family, and your businesses safe in cyberspace.
Today’s topic: Password Managers
The need for a password manager may not be immediately obvious. After all, there are existing strategies that seem to work:
- Solution: Write my passwords down on a sheet of paper and keep them in my desk or type them up in an Excel spreadsheet on my computer
- Problem: this approach is vulnerable to physical access (someone looking in your desk or over your shoulder), and the passwords cannot be accessed if you are not at your desk
- Solution: memorize them all
- Problem: most people cannot commit tens to hundreds of passwords to memory and which account each password is associated with. As a result, unfortunately, many users end up re-using the same passwords across multiple accounts, which is an insecure password strategy
To combat these issues, today we are recommending 3 Password Managers that will make your information more secure while also relieving the headaches associated with managing passwords.
Dashlane
- Feature summary:
- Free plan and paid plans
- 2 Factor Authentication
- Multi-device support
- Generate strong passwords
- Autofill browser plugins
“Dashlane Premium’s dark web monitoring service lets me sleep a little easier knowing that Dashlane is always trying to spot my email account credentials flitting across the dark web.”
LastPass
- Feature summary:
- Free and paid plans
- 2 Factor Authentication
- Multi-device support
- Generate strong passwords
- Autofill browser plugins
- Login sharing
“I really like how easy it is to sync my password vault between different devices and that through the family plan my whole family can be secure.”
Bitwarden
- Information at a glance:
- Open source
- Free version includes multi-device sync, 2 users
- Generate strong passwords
- Autofill plugins
“With Bitwarden, even at the free tier I can store as many passwords as I want and sync them across all my devices. It does everything I need but has affordable premium and family plans if I ever needed to upgrade.”