{"id":2375,"date":"2014-06-30T09:42:20","date_gmt":"2014-06-30T14:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/?p=2375"},"modified":"2015-04-24T16:07:01","modified_gmt":"2015-04-24T21:07:01","slug":"the-dos-and-donts-of-managing-your-password","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.poweradmin.com\/blog\/the-dos-and-donts-of-managing-your-password\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Create and Manage Stronger Passwords"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Creating<\/a>The cloud is becoming an everyday part of our business and personal lives, as we move more and more towards fully cloud-based systems that store our own and our client\u2019s information online. With the latest reveal about the HeartBleed bug<\/a> however, it has become increasingly important that we use strong, unique passwords to avoid being compromised.<\/span><\/p>\n

Our valuable data is now out on the net for others to find and exploit it if we don\u2019t take the correct precautions, so here\u2019s a hotlist of things you should be doing (besides the obvious) to ensure that all your passwords are as safe as they can be.<\/span><\/p>\n

Have MULTIPLE Good Passwords<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

It\u2019s not enough to have one good password any more. If a hacker <\/a>gains access to one account, the first thing they will do is attempt to access all of your other accounts with the same password and some simple variations. For that reason, you need to have a unique password for every different account and program<\/em><\/strong> that you access. This can be daunting for anyone like myself who has trouble remembering a single password, let alone a dozen. Fortunately, there are programs out there that help to make the process of remembering a whole lot easier.<\/span><\/p>\n

Password Managers<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Password managers are hugely useful if you need to remember a large number of different passwords to access different accounts and programs online. The best of these tools<\/a> actually remove the requirement for you to log into an account every time you access it. Instead the manager does that for you as soon as you access the site. This kind of functionality also means that you can use more complicated, harder to remember (and harder to break) passwords than you might otherwise have because the program does the remembering for you.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, I can hear your concern, surely giving your information to another program is just giving hackers one more program to access, except this time they get access to all of your passwords? Fortunately, any good password manager is going to feature encryption software. This means that, even if someone does hack into it (which is already very difficult to do), the information they gain from the hack will be useless to them. There are plenty of password managers out there, but three that come heavily recommended from multiple sources are LastPass<\/a>, 1Password<\/a> and KeePass<\/a>. All three are cloud based and make it very easy for you to import any passwords you might already have saved in your browsers.<\/span><\/p>\n

Two-Step Verification<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Password managers aren\u2019t your only option. If you\u2019re a keen Google user and store a lot of information on their various offerings, you should definitely make use of their 2-step verification<\/a> system. This is easily enabled through the security settings on your Google account and requires you to provide a code as well as your password whenever you\u2019re logging in from a new location. This code is randomly generated by an app on your phone at regular intervals, meaning it\u2019s very hard to get right if you don\u2019t have access to the phone generating the code. If you do elect to use 2-step verification, make sure to secure your phone as well, otherwise you\u2019re still at risk if it\u2019s stolen.<\/span><\/p>\n

How to create a strong password<\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

If you\u2019ve got a good memory, or a password manager in place, then there are plenty of good password generators<\/a> out there that will create a new, complex password for you that will make hackers struggle. However, if you are still uncomfortable with the idea of a password manager, and want to create passwords and remember them yourself; or if you\u2019re not dealing with valuable information online and therefore don\u2019t have to worry about being locked tight, here\u2019s a good list of tips and tricks to create something that\u2019s complex, while still being memorable.<\/span><\/p>\n