Maintaining Sanity and Security: Why Use a Password Manager?

We all know better than to use “12345″ or our date of birth as a password for securing our data. But, even though we take care not to use passwords that are too obvious, a lot of us have a tendency to recycle the same set of passwords over and over, and it’s not uncommon for some of us to use passwords that aren’t genuinely secure.

It’s understandable. Often enough, it’s sanity maintenance. I know I’ve rolled my eyes when my institution, for security reasons, periodically demands that I change my password on some of my databases (and won’t let me recycle passwords I’ve used recently). I know why they insist on it. They’re right to insist on it, especially given the sensitivity of some of the student data that faculty work with. Just yesterday, Lifehacker ran a post on why it’s so important to use strong passwords. Having your password at RockYou compromised may not be the greatest catastrophe in the world (unless you use the same password for all your other logins, but you wouldn’t do that, would you?), but imagine if the password that was compromised was the one you use for online banking, or for access to your students’ records!

The problem that’s sometimes kept me from using stronger passwords is the fear that I won’t remember them. After all, if I can’t remember my password, I won’t be able to access the information I need–and writing it on a post-it note that I stick in my desk drawer seems to defeat the purpose of having a secure password in the first place (or even having a password at all, for that matter). And the fact that one of the passwords is one that I only use about every six months doesn’t help, since I’m also asked to change it about every six months.

That’s why, about a year ago, I moved to using a password manager to keep track of my passwords for me, securely. In August 2008 Lifehacker polled their readers about their favorite password managers, and ran a post with their responses. The winners were:

• Sxipper (a FireFox extension)
• KeePass (all platforms)
• 1Password (Max OS X only)
• Roboform (Windows)
• FireFox’s built-in password manager

I’m currently using 1Password, and like it very well, especially since I can use DropBox to sync the keychain it uses between my home and office machines. If readers have experience with any of the others or with ones that aren’t mentioned here–or if someone has a great system for remembering strong passwords some other way–let’s hear about it in the comments.

[The image in this post is by Flickr user Max (Tj) and is CC-licensed.]