There are a lot of password managers out there, I am going to talk a little bit about what they are, and how to use them in this tutorial.
Lets start with what is a password manager. A password manager is a piece of software designed to store and organize your password. a good password manager will also generate long, complexed, and unique passwords that you can use to keep you safe while you are setting up account on the internet. The password manager you select should allow you to feel safe while signing into your account due to the fact that you know your passwords are complex, unique, stored in a safe place, and you dont have to remember them. All you have to do is remember the strong and complex password you setup on your password manager. Then the password manager will remember everything else for you.
Now that you know a little bit about what a password manager is, lets go over what makes a password manager good.
- Generate Passwords. First and one of the more important features of a password manager is the ability to generate secure, complex, and unique passwords for you. By doing this the password manager takes the guess work away from you. For example if you need a new password for you email, you might select something like a pet or childs name, which is not a secure, complex, and unique password. The password manager however will create a password like this rY7HFbT$^mr#p9 . Do not use this as a password as this password is now on the internet, however you can see that the password from the password manager is random, long and complex. It is using both upper and lower characters, numbers, and special characters. you can also increase the lenth of the password to incease complexity.
- Two Factor Authentication. Staying with the password theme, two factor authentication is very important when talking about securing your password manager. Like the name suggests two factor authentication uses 2 different types of services to verify you are the owner of the application. one type is going to be your password the other might be a code sent to your email or texted to your phone, or it could be a USB key you plug into your computer or an application that runs on your phone that generates a pin number. I will go into more details on two factor authentiction in its own tutorial. For now know that it is an important part of securing your passwords.
- Online and offline access. There are 2 basic types of software styles for password managers. Online password managers store all your passwords at the software makers site. This means that as long as you have internet access you can always get to your data. you install an app on your phone, computer or tablet and sing into the password manager. it will then sync your passwords to that device. so you can use it across all devices also. If you add a password to the password manager from your phone, it will be availible to your computer the next time you login. this style is very convenient and easy to use. It does come with a risk. if that password manager is hacked, the hacker may very well have access to all your data. so that is something to keep in mind. Offline password managers are an application you install on your phone, tablet or computer and the database you create with your passwords is stored on that device. so if you want to share that data across all of your devices you will have to copy the database manually to all those devices one at a time. This also means that if you say add a password to the password manager on your phone, it will not be availible on your computer until you copy the database from your phone to your computer manually. This style is harder to keep in sync with all your devices, but is more secure. Some offline password managers also offer a USB flash drive version meaning you install it on a USB flash drive and then plug the drive into your device to access the data. You don't have to worry about syncing the data this way but it is a little hard to use with phones and tablets as you will have to get an adapter to go from USB to what ever input your phone or tablet use.
- Browser Integration. For the password managers that are online alot of them have what is called browser integration. This means there is a so called app or browser extension that allows you to sign into the password manager and having it running on your browser. The nice thing about this is it allows you to interface with all the websites you most use. For instance your bank or Amazon shopping, email, and other sites you have logins too that might require payment. In it simplest form. you go to your browser and log into say Amazon.com. Then usually in the upper right hand corner you will have an icon for your password manager, you click on that icon and it will drop down a list of sites the password manager thinks you need, you click on Amazon and it will then input your user id and password for you. allowing you to easily login and do your online shopping. The really nice thing about this is you can have a super secure password not cause you dont have to remember it. So for example your password can now be something like 27 characters long with upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters, you don't care cause you don't have to memorize it or type it in. This feature is what I would say a key feature for password managers. The easier they make it to use the more people will take advantage of it.
- Password Capture. Another very nice feature of online password managers is the ability to do a internet site user id and password capture. What does this mean? Lets use Amazon.com for our example again. Lets say you have an Amazon.com account but you do not have it saved in your password manager. How do you get it into your password manager. Well you open your browser of choise and make sure you are logged into your password manager, we talked about how to do that above in Browser Intergration. Once you are logged into your password manager, navigate to https://www.amazon.com. and log into your Amazon account. If your password manager has the feature to capture passwords you will see a drop down screen appear asking you if you want to add Amazon.com to your password manager. Select yes. and you are now done. To test this, close your browser completely, and reopen it. log back into your password manager and navigate to Amazon again. This time instead of signing into Amazon manually go up to your password manager icon and click on it. It should drop a menu down with an entry for Amazon.com click on that entry and it should automatically enter your user id and password into the Amazon.com site. it is that simple.
There are many other options that password managers have, however I am going to stop with this list as I dont want to overwhelm anyone with too much information. In the next sections lets list out a few of the more popular password managers and give a brief overview of them. I want to state again that on this site I don't want to tell anyone what to do or what to buy. I just want to give information so you can make your own decission. Hopefully the information given here will help you make that decission a little easier. Also please remember that examples I use above are not recommendations either. I am not telling you to go get an Amazon account. I am only using Amazon as an example of an internet website that uses a login for their services.
This list is as comprehensive as I can make it, and the list is not in any order. Again the purpose here is information for you. I am not telling you what you should use. I only want to help you by putting the information here so you can make an informed decission
- Keeper
- Dashlane
- LastPass
- Bitwarden
- Logme Once
- Password Boss
- NordPass
- 1Password
- RoboForm
- Sticky Password
- McAfee
- Zoho Vault
- Myki Password manager
- PassHub
- Symantec Norton Password Manager
- Avira password manager
- Enpass Password Manager
- KeePass
- mSecure
- RememBear Password Manager
- Keepsolid Passwarden Password Manager
- PassCamp Password Manager
- SafeInCloud Password Manager
- Kaspersky Password Manager
- Intuitive Password
Again this list does not include every Password Manager out there. I will do my best to keep this list current and as time goes on I will make each one a link with information about them so check back if your choise is not active. One last note and I want to include this just to give you all options, you can alway keep a note book with all your User ID's and Passwords in that. I would never recommend that for the work place, but for home use it is an option. as with all options there are pro's and con's. the pro's for the password managers are mainly: easy to use, convienent, you don't have to remember your ID's and passwords, and the application you pick most likely will generate secure and unique passwords for you. The con's for password managers is really this: as with all software there is the chance that it will get hacked. if that happens, all your information could be leaked. the chance is low but a few of the password managers in the list have been hacked. As with the notebook at home the Pro's are mainly: security, you dont have to worry about your notebook being hacked. The con's are: the notebook can be lost or stolen. So remember nothing is 100%. Do your homework select the best option for you and have fun. For me I use a password manager both personally and a different one at work. My list of personal equipment and software I use is listed on the home page.