Password Security
Your memorable password has probably already been compromised!
Don’t believe it? Test your favorite passwords at the Have I Been Pwned password tester. For more fun, try your email address, too and see how many data leaks you have already been a part of!
The Danger of Reused Passwords
Having your password stolen in a data breach is an unfortunate reality that we’ve likely all faced. When you reuse a password in more than one place, you run the risk of attackers trying stolen passwords at other common sites. This is called “credential stuffing.”
There are a couple strategies to solve this, but a good place to begin is to use a different password for every account. But that’s so many passwords to remember!
The Benefits of a Password Manager
New strategy: you don’t have to remember any passwords! In fact, you shouldn’t be able to remember any passwords, because they should all be randomly-generated by a password manager like 1Password or even the password manager built into your OS or browser.
Technically, you will have to remember one password: your master password used to unlock your password manager (hence the name 1Password… you only have to remember one password.)
Naturally, that one master password should be a password you don’t use anywhere else. For my master password, I like to use a phrase that is easy to remember and type, but long enough to be very secure. My master password is a quote from a movie, with spaces and all. 1Password even provides a printable “emergency kit” where you can write down that master password, along with some special codes that you can use to get back into your 1Password account.
Easier for You
A password manager also helps ease the burden of using different passwords everywhere by helping autofill your passwords when you’re signing into your accounts, and suggesting and saving new passwords when you sign up. You can set it up on your phones, tablets, and computers to be able to help fill in passwords everywhere you need them, and you can easily look up and copy passwords to paste into a site if autofill doesn’t happen to work in a particular situation.
Share with Your Team
For accounts that need to be accessed by multiple people, 1Password lets us securely share these credentials with its Teams feature. And we can securely store and share other sensitive information, like bank accounts, credit cards, and anything else that might be sensitive. 1Password uses a variety of secure ways to protect the data as its shared.
Extra Security Features
There are also other important security practices like enabling 2FA (Two-factor authentication) which 1Password can help with, even to using hardware security keys which can prevent Phishing attacks. We can go over setting up and using those things another time.
For accounts that can use or require 2FA, 1Password can even be set up as the 2FA authentication device (aside: don’t ever use your phone number for 2FA!), and that can be shared via Teams, too!
Don’t Wait!
The Auxilio staff uses 1Password but there are several good password managers on the market. We strongly encourage you and your team to invest in one and use it exclusively for all your personal and business passwords. It will make signing into any site more secure and so much easier!