How and why you should use a dedicated password manager

As the webmaster for our site, I get a lot of automated messages from all our various systems, including – pretty regularly – notifications when people have been locked out of our systems for trying the wrong usernames and passwords. Inevitably, I see some of the same folks bumping up against our logins, particularly once you’ve reached a certain level and have access to more areas of our site like the Lt. Commanders training area.
We’ve tried some utilities to make it easier to log into the site, but often they become cumbersome to work with over the long term as security standards change. One login system we had for our WordPress site started requiring monthly manual updates that were a nightmare!
I’ve solved this problem by using a dedicated password manager. I have only two passwords I remember: The one that opens my computer, and the one that opens my password manager. Beyond that, every password is a long, random, and complex set of characters. Not only does that ensure that it’s hard to break my passwords by randomly guessing, but if one website in my life gets hacked (looking at you, Target.com!), hackers don’t have access to everything else. It also means that I don’t ever have to worry about trying the wrong password in any of our sites – as long as the username and password are correctly filed with the URL of our site, it’s popped into the form automatically by my password manager and I’m good to go!
If you’re struggling with this, I definitely recommend checking out this article that explains more about why you need a dedicated password manager and also which one is the best to pick.
I personally use 1Password which I find to be really well designed and easy to use. But it costs about $4/mo if you pay yearly. Other password managers (like LastPass) have a free version anyone can use!
Image credit: Philipp Katzenberger