Mar 23, 2015

With modern day applications, registration is required for us to utilise the websites functionality. In most cases when you register on a website you must choose a username and a password that will form your login details.

When you specify this password, the recommended approach is to create a “Strong” password which must contain symbols, letters and case specific characters, not to mention the length of the password as well.

A problem with this approach is that it can become difficult to remember these passwords, for example the following password “t$yHU5us&t”, which is considered a very strong password. After a while of using the site you might memorise the password, but until that point you will have it written down somewhere so that you can use it when you need to.

This was an example of registering to one site, how about having passwords for multiple sites? You might be thinking the best approach for that is to use the same password again with all other sites, but if somebody gets a hold of that password they can access all areas where you have used that password.

Alternatively you can start using technologies that store these credentials in an encrypted vault; one of these technologies is called “LastPass”. By using this technology you can easily generate strong passwords to be used with your login.

When generating a password you can choose the length of the password, the special characters and numbers to be included as well as making it pronounceable if you wish to.

The benefit of this is that once you have registered using the specific password, LastPass will remember the site name and the password so that when you browse there again it can provide the credentials for you.

You should see the star symbol in the username and password boxes of your site, and by clicking on that star symbol you will get a popup with the sites name. This will allow LastPass to fill in the details for you.

When using a browser such as Chrome you can have the extension of LastPass fitted to your menu bar on top, this will indicate if the LastPass vault has a password stored for the site that you are currently on, this is indicated by the white star in the red square.

The benefits don't stop there, LastPass can save your forms data as well. Once you have registered to any site and filled in your personal details, LastPass can save these details so that next time you need to fill in a registration form you can populate it automatically.

Finally, because you are storing these credentials in a vault, you also have access to that vault where you can manage all of your saved credentials. The vault is categorised, which makes finding the password you are looking for easier.

With all these things in place you never have to remember your credentials again, other than LastPass that is.