Isn't Storing Your Passwords In One Place a Security Risk?
Hi everyone. Leo Notenboom here for askleo.com. If you're someplace where you find a “Like” button
at the end of the video, would you please hit that? It really does help,
not just me, but everybody else who is looking for answers out on the internet.
So one of the pieces of feedback I get a lot when I reference or recommend using a password vault or
password manager is that: it seems like you're putting all of your eggs in one basket, you are
putting all of your passwords in one place, and if that one place ever gets compromised? Well then.
Whoever compromises it, whoever gets their hands on it, has everything. And you know what
you're absolutely right. No matter what one place you use if somebody gets their hands on it,
everything is compromised. But all that really means is you need to use a really good one place.
In other words a place that is not only easy to use, remembers everything properly,
and makes it easy for you to use long and strong passwords, different passwords for every site,
but something that does it securely. I have to be super clear here. There is no perfect solution.
None. Security is never ever an absolute state. You are never secure, you are only
more secure or less secure depending on the actions you take and the decisions you make.
Using a password manager, I happen to use LastPass but there are many others,
is… well one way to call it: it's the least worst solution. Right. If you have to manage passwords
then it is the best of the worst. Right? Of all the other alternatives that you might come up
with to manage your passwords having a strong and secure tool like a password manager like LastPass
is in my opinion by far the best approach and the most secure approach.
It is the best single basket you can put all of your eggs in. The big thing about password
managers, specifically, is that they then enable you to use what I consider to be the gold standard
of passwords. Which is otherwise unachievable. What's the gold standard? Long passwords. 20
characters is what I use. Random characters. Passwords you could never ever remember. My 20
character passwords are indeed random. I could not tell you my banking password if I had to.
LastPass can and it does it transparently. And it allows me to have a different one of those for
every site I use. You can't do that unless you're using some kind of a tool to manage the process.
And password vaults are designed for exactly that. So yes absolutely, you are putting all your eggs
in one basket when you're using a password manager. But it's the best basket available.
By all means do it. I hope that's helpful. I hope that clarifies why I think this is so important.
If you've got comments, you want related links, the article on which this video was based
visit askleo.com/131148. I’m Leo Notenboom. This is askleo.com. Thanks for watching.