Tag: Passwords

A Librarian’s Guide to Cybercrime Mitigation – Review

Yesterday, I attended the Choice webinar, “A Librarian’s Guide to Cybercrime Mitigation” and it was one of the more rewarding webinars I have attended. It reminded me of why we do the things we do when it comes to security. I would encourage any and all Library staff to watch the recording, found here:

https://www.choice360.org/webinars/a-librarians-guide-to-cybercrime-mitigation/

They provided several tools that can help you yourself protect your digital footprint. From checking how secure your password might be to seeing if a website is malicious or not. Here are a few of the tools mentioned:

How secure is my password? https://www.security.org/how-secure-is-my-password/

Check if sites have been reported malicious: https://www.virustotal.com/gui/home/url

Check to see if your email address has been a part of a data breach: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Please, secure your passwords; use a password manager; don’t re-use passwords; and above all else, don’t leave passwords laying around on sticky note! 😊

Using Lastpass for improved password security

It’s that time of year for me — VUIT is sending me an email every day saying it’s time to change my e-password. Thankfully, I have a great tool to help manage my passwords and make them more secure — and you can, too!

Lastpass is a free and easy-to-use password management tool that runs right in your browser. It is encrypted and secure — Lastpass is not able to access your passwords. (Learn more about how it works.)

The most secure passwords are unique, long, random-character strings that are not found in the dictionary. Most of us haven’t mastered the memorization of a zillion random-character strings. Thankfully, Lastpass has! It will store all of your passwords in a secure vault that is only accessible on your local machine. When you visit a site that requires a login, Lastpass will fill in your credentials automatically. You can even set it to go a step further and log you in as soon as you land on the page. Magic! And when you create a new account on a site, Lastpass will offer to generate a secure password for you. It will then save your new password in your password vault.

There are some other nice features too:

  • Form fills: Shop online much? Save your credit card information in your vault and have it auto-fill at checkout on any shopping site. Apologies in advance to your wallet.
  • Secure notes: This is a place to securely store and access other information you might need easy access to, such as social security numbers or passwords for things that aren’t websites (software, Windows, etc.).
  • Sharing: You can securely share passwords with other Lastpass users. This is great for households who share a login for things like utilities and Netflix. Never send passwords via email!
  • Security challenge: This feature analyzes the security of your vault and offers recommendations on how to improve your overall security, such as not reusing passwords and creating stronger passwords to replace weak ones.
  • Export: You can easily export your passwords at any time. This is useful not only if you plan to stop using Lastpass in the future, but also if you want to print out all of your passwords and store them with your other important financial documents, such as your will.

So stop reusing that same old password, and give Lastpass a try!