Hello and welcome to our series of technology-related blog posts. Our today’s post is unusual in a way that it is more like a shout-out to one of the tools we use a lot and not a tutorial per se. This tool is called LastPass. If you consume various services online you know how much pain it is to keep track of all your passwords. Keep reading to learn how we are dealing with this and how you can use it at your own piano studio too.
There was a time…
It is hard to believe, but passwords have been used since ancient times. By who? Clearly, spies and military people would have been the primary users of the word in their day-to-day communication. However, the rest of us didn’t need the passwords as much. And then came the Internet!
Internet
The Internet changed everything. Companies and people started migrating information, products, and services from the physical world to the virtual spaces. That’s when we realized that some of that online content can be secured and private when other content can be open to all. To secure and protect those private spaces we started using passwords a lot.
From One to Many
When you have one online resource to access you can easily come up with a secret password. Having two or three is still ok. Things get really complicated when the number of passwords increases monthly. As humans, we stress about it and start cutting corners. Just to save a few minutes and get through login faster we start re-using passwords or creating very weak ones. It compromises our security and unless we keep our passwords in a secure vault, they start getting pwned and one day our identity gets stolen. Is there a vault for passwords?
Secure Vault
There are many ways to keep passwords safe and no, a sticky note on your laptop is not one of them. A sticky note locked inside a bank vault, maybe. However, going to your local bank to get the password is rather inconvenient. That’s where digital vaults can help. While the physical vault is protected by the thick reinforced walls, the digital one is secured with very strong encryption. Digital vaults are also known as password managers.
Password Managers
It is a category of software which helps in storing, generating and retrieving secured passwords on demand. LastPass is a password manager of our choice. We have been using it for several years now and find it very robust and secure for our piano studio, business, and personal needs. This password manager has its own rhythm. When you create an online account for any service, the first thing you do you generate a new password. That’s when your password manager helps you to generate a random password with any number of letters, digits, special characters or all at once. Once generated the password gets encrypted and stored in a secure vault. The only way to retrieve it from there is to enter your master password. It is, in fact, the only password you must memorize as without it you will never be able to retrieve stored passwords. And of course, changing your master password regularly will increase your protection tenfold.
One of the useful features of LastPass is a vulnerability checker. It detects duplicated weak and old passwords in your vault. For some online services, you can even execute an automatic password change. All in all, it saves time and protects you from fraud. Hope you like it and tell others!
