The Key to Keeping Your Passwords Safe (and Secure)

Do you ever get to the office on a Monday morning, plop down to log in to your computer and realize that your start-of-the-week brain fog is making it utterly impossible to keep your work computer passwords straight from the bazillion others you are supposed to remember?

We know what you're thinking... #ButFirstCoffee

You're probably also thinking #FirstWorldProblems. But the struggle is real! If you're like us, you probably have dozens of passwords for a whole list of different websites you use.

But how do you manage them all, without choosing passwords that are too simple or writing them down somewhere?* How do you keep all of your information safe and secure?

We sat down with Senior Project Manager Bryan Gruhlke (@BryanGruhlke) to ask him for his advice.

"I use a password manager to maintain all my passwords." he said. "There are a bunch of them out there. Some are browser-based and others are stand-alone apps. I prefer apps."

Some of his reasons for using password managers from a high-level perspective are:

• You only need to remember one password

• You can have a different password for every website (hence more security)

• Passwords can be very complex (a mix of letters, numbers and symbols)

• Your passwords are available on all your devices – phone, tablet, laptop and desktop

• Two words: Auto. Login. The password manager opens the webpage and logs in for you so there's no extra typing required

Here are a few options to choose from:

• KeePass Password Safe (completely FREE, but you probably need to use something like DropBox or Google Drive for syncing across devices)

• LastPass (FREE, upgrade to premium for $12 per year)

• Dashlane (FREE, upgrade to premium for $39.99 per year)

So, which one does Bryan use?

"I recently switched from KeePass to Dashlane because it integrates more deeply with browsers on all of my devices. KeePass stands alone but I find that often I'm doing a lot of copying and pasting."

He also prefers Dashlane because "it puts an extension into Chrome, has an auto login feature and makes auto synching more integrated. It also acts as a digital wallet that saves credit card information and even address information. It's definitely worth the annual subscription price."

Finally, a password manager that makes this digital life we lead easier to manage and a little less risky.

*Don’t you dare do it!

 --

Special note: Since this initial write-up, Bryan has actually switched back from Dashlane to KeePass because of one feature he grew to not care for: Dashlane’s automatic logging in. Not being able to see every login page made it difficult for him to see what the pages would look like on the sites Visionary currently builds for our clients. Unless you yourself build multiple sites, this shouldn’t be problematic for you.