Main Street Practitioner Blog

When you write your passwords down, someone can steal your notes. Recording them in a text document on your computer or phone gives hackers a treasure trove if you get hacked or your devices are stolen. You can do better than that. Passwords need to be super-secret, so use a secure password management app.

Password management apps like Dashlane (all NSA members get a discount on their premium plan) keep all your log-in info safe — across your desktop and mobile devices — and available to you all the time through secure servers. This app will generate strong passwords for your accounts, and store them, so you don’t have to remember them or write them down.

Dashlane also scans the dark web for signs that your identifying information is for sale and notifies if your data is compromised. That’s a great additional feature!

Some password managers may only require one password to access their service. NSA highly recommends that you use more than one form of verification – for example a password and a random PIN sent via text to your phone. Multi-factor log-in is safer than using just a password. When you add another layer to the process you can make logging in even more secure.

If you need more reasons beyond security to use a password manager, read this article from Jack Wallen on TechRepublic.