Posts Tagged ‘Bruce Schneier’

Keep passwords safe with password safe.

Thursday, November 20th, 2008

Keep passwords safe wcith password safe.

From an end user viewpoint, the key to any secure system is indeed managing the key. As an online backup provider, a major concern for us is that clients retain their encryption details and do so in a safe manner and on a different system (and also in paper format) to the online backup source computer.

These same clients will have numerous other non online backup passwords and authentication details which they will also need to retain. Singular password usage for multiple applications is not good practice and therefore even occasional computer users will likely have a considerable number of passwords to retain. These will range from critical passwords to the seemingly mundane. If a password is required the associated application is likely to be confidential in nature.  This can be online banking, system logon, email, forum membership, host management and a wide variety of other applications.

if you need guidance on choosing passwords you should read the Bruce Schneier penned guide in the Guardian.

The crux of this post however is keeping passwords safe after you have chosen them.
An excellent application to assist with this is Password Safe. (supervision by Bruce Schneier) Bruce is a world renowned expert in data security. Password Safe is actually a free application. PasswordSafe uses TwoFish (block cipher by Counterpane Labs) technology.

You can download Password safe from Sourceforge. The very short faq list for this app is testament to the simplicity which has been successfully applied to the user experience inherent with this far from simple technology.

Great app. No strings. No cost. No adds. No compromise.