What is a Password Manager...  and Why Should I Care?

Simple question with a huge answer, but let me give you the essentials. Then you can decide if you want to read further.

First, let's understand the problem. We need passwords for everything. To login to your bank, to login to the Planet Fitness or Gold's Gym website, or to place an online order at your favorite South Florida Starbucks. The problem is I can't remember all the passwords for all these sites.

A solution (a poor one) is to use the same password for all the sites. Simple, right? Uhh... what happens if your password is compromised at Starbucks, and that's the same password you use at the bank? Ok... so that's a bad idea. And I'm back with the problem, how to I remember all those darn passwords.

That's where a password manager comes in. Think of a password manager like a safe. You put all your passwords inside the safe, then close and lock the door. To open the "safe" you need one master password. With that, you can get all the other passwords, all of which can be (should be) different for each site.

OK...that's it. A password manager is a vault that holds your passwords...  you only need to remember one password to unlock the vault, and voila... your ready to dish out passwords to any site you go to.

Read on if you want to know more.

Is a Password Manager Secure?

Usually... it depends on the actual software. The product I use and love is called LastPass. It's constantly rated the as one of the best password managers on the market today. LastPass is extremely secure. Your password is encrypted using your master password as the key. Without that key, it's impossible to un-encrypt your data.

How Does a Password Manager Work?

When you start your computer and open up your web browser, you'll get prompted to put in your master password to unlock your password vault.

Then when you go to a website (say for example, your bank) and click on the button to login, the password manager can automatically fill in your username and password (or let you do it with a single click). Pretty slick, huh?

At Connections for Business in Hollywood / Fort Lauderdale, we have a lot of helpful ( and slick ) IT solutions for your South Florida business. Give us a shout today to learn more.