Day 13 : Dell Vostro v130–Keeping a Secret.

TradeSecret No.5 Strong Passwords and Strong Boxes

Managing many client sites as well as my own business requires me to handle and manage many more passwords and usernames than I can possibly remember. 

There are many articles on the topic of password management and other peoples preferences however my own choice comes down to the following criteria.

• Can I use it offline
• Will it work on all my platforms
• Can I handle mutliple databases of details
• Can I use it to create secure passwords
• Can I use seperate keys and passwords to secure the data

To this end Keepass has more than met my criteria and whilst it may not look the most gleaming of all tools it runs as easily on this Vostro v130 as it does on my main machine, my Mac Air and my Linux box. It works, it runs and it provides security.

 

As I mentioned it runs on many platforms and in doing so it uses a file as the database for your secure information it encrypts this password using a password and optionally a secure key file which you generate and store separate from the database file. In my case the secure key file is managed on a network mounted drive available via a Virtual Private Network ( more on that in another entry ). My password is unique for the database and is 24 characters minimum in length.  After that Keepass helps me store the credentials required for each client in databases stored separate to the secure keys on two USB drives which I update every year. The two factor authentication and the restricted distribution of the data is a pain to work with but it works for me and the Vostro has already shown it is more than capable of playing catchup with my technical shenanigans.

None of this is ideal but in an ideal world I would have an eidetic memory and since I appear to be lacking the suitable upgrades I pass the work onto Keypass.

Whilst other tools provide automation services to complete and fill in details on webforms I find the separation of data from application in this instance to be an additional benefit. Whilst my mechanisms for securing confidential data may appear over the top

Thanks for reading.