Security breaches are a common occurrence these days: hackers sometimes manage to enter our confidential accounts, send spam from our account to family and friends or even leak passwords. Secure websites too don’t do a very good job of keeping our personal information safe.

Much of this commotion and insecurity stems from poor password practices: many of us, in an attempt to simplify our lives, choose simple passwords. But in most cases, those who land into serious trouble are those whose passwords are easy to guess and downright insecure.

The use of password managers actually helps you with remembering and managing passwords, along with the flexibility to check your password strength and warning users that similar passwords are being used on multiple websites.

wPassword managers offer a measureable degree of security as opposed to writing down passwords on a diary or a sticky notepad. Opt from our selection of three free-to-use password managers:

Have trouble remembering passwords? Learn how to securely store your passwords and summon them as and when needed

1) LastPass

One of the most popular password managers out there is LastPass, available on a variety of platforms including Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Android, iOS and Blackberry.

LastPass offers leading encryption technology, local only decryption and multifactor authentication. It is simple to use; install it, set up an account and you are good to go. Once logged in, it will automatically prompt you to save passwords and form data. This option can be turned off, and it automatically fills the username and password fields, which can be enabled for selected websites only.

LastPass uses a single master password to login to your account; if you forget it, though, the master password is recoverable as well. It has an inbuilt password generator to create unique passwords as well as a password checker that verifies the strength of your stored passwords. All passwords kept in the password vault are stored on LastPass’s server in a heavily encrypted form. LastPass does not possess the encryption key to any account and all the encrypting and decrypting process takes place on your computer.

It also offers the flexibility to import passwords from 30 different providers, including the popular free open source password manager KeePass. It can also be installed as a browser extension for all the popular web browsers out there: Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Opera. For smartphones and tablet access to LastPass, it will require a yearly subscription worth $12. It can be downloaded from: https://lastpass.com/misc_download2.php

2) KeePass

KeePass is one of the most secure password managers out there, with its biggest advantage over competitors being its open source heritage. KeePass supports the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES, Rijndael) and the Twofish algorithm to encrypt its password databases. Not only the password fields, but the complete database is encrypted. It provides in-memory passwords protection, too.

KeePass allows users the flexibility to use one master password that decrypts your database or use key files that can be carried on floppy drives, Flash drives and burnt onto a CD. If more security is needed, the two above methods — Master Password and Key Files — can be deployed together to decrypt your password locker. For unlocking the password database, you would need the key file and your master password.

KeePass requires no installation, and can be carried on a USB flash drive too. It offers the ability to export your password list into CSV, XML, TXT and HTML formats. You can also import your password list from Lastpass, Password Keeper and Password list. KeePass features include the ability to form password groups, time fields and entry attachments and a strong random password generator.

Keepass also offers plugin architecture which allows plugins to be created for it by people to extend its functionality even further. Since Keepass is open source, it is OSI certified too. It can be downloaded from: http://keepass.info/download.html

3) F-Secure Key

F-Secure Key (free for basic version, $16/year for premium) is a new password manager by security company F-Secure. The free PC edition along with the iOS, Android and Mac solutions does not offer any online synchronisation. For that, you need to purchase the premium version instead. It has a clean GUI and intuitive interface. It can export all your passwords from all popular password managers too. It offers standardised industry standard AES-256 bit encryption to secure the passwords.

Like its competitors, KeePass and LastPass, F-Secure Key includes a tool to generate passwords, albeit one that is not as feature-rich. The apps’ auto-locking feature cannot be controlled, and the auto-login feature lacks severe limitations. It neither supports password groups or categories which can be helpful in identifying different kinds of websites. It can be downloaded from:http://www.f-secure.com/en/web/home_global/key

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, July 20th, 2014