You know you’re guilty of it: using the same password for everything. Believe me, I understand how much of a pain in the you know what it is to try to remember all those passwords; and if you’re using the same password for sites that don’t share sensitive information, like a login to a news feed you like to read, then maybe it’s okay.

HOWEVER, there are several passwords you want to keep unique. They are, at a minimum:

  • your email password(s) (if you have more than one email account – each should be unique).
  • online bank website(s) (if you have more than one bank),
  • investment account websites,
  • insurance websites,
  • government websites like social security, military, taxes, etc.,
  • vendor websites (for your business)
  • and anyplace you enter sensitive data, like credit card numbers or personal information.

If any site you’ve registered at, or bought from, gets hacked – and you’ve used the SAME password you usually use, to register at that site – you can pretty much bet hackers are going to gain access to all of your websites. They’ll have your e-mail and your password, and they will use that info to hack into ALL of your websites. From there, they’ll be able to get their grubby hand on all kinds of your data.

Week passwords are one of the top ways’ criminals break into computers.

It is CRITICAL today to use strong passwords.

So how do you create, manage, and use so many passwords?

With a Password Manager! There are many options available, but some I have experience with are LastPass, Dashlane and PassPortal. Lastpass and Dashlane have free versions, PassPortal is a tool HBBTech provides as a service for $3.50 per user per month. Lastpass and Dashlane cannot be synced across users in a business unless you upgrade to a paid version. PassPortal is designed to share business credentials across multiple users, while still providing a secure database for each individual user. If you are using PassPortal, and an employee leaves your business, they can take their personal side of the database with them, but not the business side.

If you are a client of HBBTech, you can give us authorization to access certain parts of the database so we don’t have to ask for the passwords every time we help you with a problem, or you can decide not to give us access, and we won’t be able to see anything. It’s completely up to you.

All three will generate secure, “STRONG” passwords for you, based on criteria you specify (number of characters (minimum of 10 characters suggested), upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, and special characters).

These products make it super simple to create and manage strong passwords.

If you’re not sure what to do, or what to use, give us a call at (636) 542-8653 today, or take your chances with the cyber criminals, and the fines, civil suits, reputation damage and everything else associated with a data breach.

That’s it for Tip #13

Next week’s Tip will be “Don’t Just Close Your Browser!”

Remember – It ain’t poisonal...  it's jus bidness.

‘Til next time.