Thursday, March 28, 2024
blogging painters logo

Password Management and Security

password

How many passwords do you have, or even better to ask, how many different passwords do you have? Do you use the same combination of your pet’s names and your birth year over and over?

passwordPassword protection is a big deal these days. It used to be that the faulty thought “no one would target little ole me” was somewhat true.  I recently read the life story of Kevin Mitnick,  a “hacker” that now runs a successful security company. He used social engineering a lot, and while he was very clever, there were many examples of how we can be our own worst enemy when it comes to online security. When you begin to understand why hackers want to access your website, emails and other frequently used sites, you can better understand the need be cyber safe.

Here are 7 bad password habits you need to break now

As an administrator and owner of multiple websites, there are a few things I see happening all too often when I am dealing with others and I thought I’d take a minute to share some of my favorite practices.

Password Management

I use Lastpass for my personal and 1Password at work, just cause I like to try new things and I keep the two separate. They both work great, you only need to remember on very strong password, they will auto fill the username and password on every site you visit and generate new, unique and safe passwords for you.

 

Website Logins

If you are managing your own website, you probably have given others access at some time for one reason or another, I know, because I have the logins for an inordinate amount of sites, but, hey, I’m trustworthy, right? Until someone has access to my computer or info.

Do not ever give anyone your user name and password! 

Set up a new user with the proper (needed) rights and give them their own login. When their work is done, delete the user, or change the password if you think they made need access later. You can use the vault features in LastPass to share passwords as well.

 Social Media Logins

Same thing as with passwords, make someone a manager of your Facebook page, rather than handing over your information. Have you ever wondered about logging into sites using your Google or Facebook login? There are some pros and cons, here is a video that explains it well.

 Email Accounts

GMail has a cool feature called “delegate” in email. You can give an assistant access to be able to respond to emails on your behalf, yet still be able to restrict their access if needed. You can use Google’s 2 Step Verification to make sure that even with your password, access is blocked. If you frequently use other computers to check your gmail, make sure you completely log out.

Two Factor Authentication


While Google 2 Step will cover most needs, to be extra secure, enable two factor authentication on other sites you use.

Be a Safe Clicker!

I have seen many very smart people fall for email scams and phishing attempts. If someone you don’t know, but may be in your social circle or email contacts sends you a link to “open this doc” or view this “Dropbox folder”, take a moment to think about it. Don’t ever click on a link to a third party (bank, credit card, Amazon, Paypal, etc) from an email or link on a site, go to the site and log in. Those darn crooks are getting pretty good at mimicking sites and once you enter your user name and password, they will make your life hell!

Take a few moments to review and organize your digital wallet. Leave a comment below if you have comments or suggestions.

 

3 thoughts on “Password Management and Security

  1. Thanks for posting on this topic. I have also found with regards to your wordpress login to make sure that your username is not ‘admin.’ All of these spammers assume that most people use this for their username. So make sure you change it up and do something different.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.