Securely Storing Your Passwords
Nowadays, it is very common to have a decentralized suite of tools that will help us on our daily functions at our jobs. In our eLearning space, we need tools to develop eLearning modules, edit photos, create or edit vectors, and also edit audios and videos. For this reason, we have installed on our computers, a large number of programs that will help us perform all these tasks on a daily basis.
But not only that, there are also other platforms where we can access any type of media to beautify our eLearning modules, platforms such as iStock, Shutterstock, Storyblocks, etc. To be honest, I don’t know the number of programs and platforms that I use, as it constantly varies.
Since all of these tools require login information (i.e. username and password), one of the issues, from a cybersecurity perspective, is how to safely store (or remember) all that information. One could argue that it would be ideal to use the same password for all of them, since ultimately it is just tools to use for work.
Unfortunately, it has been demonstrated that to make our lives easier, we tend to use the same password even for personal things, like emails and banking (!). So, in case a cybercriminal is able to crack our password, they can be one step closer to being able to crack the password for other, more critical platforms. I would suggest, as a cybersecurity professional, to avoid using the same password for everything, and rather come up with very complex structure for your passwords. This will at least prevent or mitigate the risk of a brute force attack (believe it or not, a password can be cracked in seconds by using a dictionary of 14 million common words!).
To the matter at hand, if we use different, complex passwords for all the tools we use at work, how do we ensure we won’t forget them, and don’t expose them by writing them in post-its to paste around our monitor or laptop?
Lucky for us, there are other tools where we can safely store these passwords. For example, LastPass is a tool that helps you manage all this login information securely, by protecting them behind a login screen and a two-factor authentication system. Some other valuable feature are that, since you can install a plugin on your browser, you don’t need to type again the password for these platforms or tools. Moreover, if these are aimed to be for work, you can create spaces within your profile, where you can safely share these passwords as necessary, with other coworkers, so long as they have profiles in the same password managers.
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