The digital age is here, and that means everything is stored in the cloud. While some things are now more convenient, another administrative nightmare has been born. Too many passwords! And now the experts are telling you that you need lower case, upper case, special characters, and at least 12-16 characters!
You’re probably experiencing some level of frustration with passwords right now—everyone is working from home while we wait for this crazy pandemic to end.
You likely have people asking you for passwords they suddenly need, but as soon as you share that password, you’ve put your data at risk. Are you going to remember to change it? Is it one of those easy-to-remember passwords that one employee can recite to the next employee? Let’s be honest, no one was ready for the current crisis. Most businesses didn’t have a plan in place for twenty (or 50 or 100) remote employees.
The truth of the matter is, you do need something better than your dog’s name followed by a number. It’s computers that are trying to guess your password, not some guy locked in a dark room, and computers can manage permutations of numbers fast!
So what’s the solution? Well, the best option is two-factor authentication. However, that may not always be available where you work or on all of the cloud services you use. The second best choice is a password manager… or password vault.
Take some time today and search “password manager.” There are plenty of great options, and some sync to your phone or across all of your devices. Password managers can store more than just passwords. They can store information like driver’s license numbers, social security numbers for your family, and the thousands of passwords you carry in a notebook (or are you the type of person who uses the same password for everything? …which is a terrible idea).
Download a password vault today and start using it. A quality one will allow you to easily generate complex passwords in seconds, as well as store links to the sites you use, and auto-fill them. The best feature is that these programs encrypt your data, so it’s a whole lot safer than writing them down or reusing them.