A password manager provides for high complexity and variety of your passwords, and in a comfortable manner. We answer the most important questions.
What is a password manager?
A program enabling you to generate, manage and store strong passwords for any online service – including your e-banking facility – in a comfortable, secure and encrypted manner.
How does a password manager work?
When setting up your password manager, you create a single strong password which you will have to remember. It is only with this password that you can access all your other passwords and use all functions this program has to offer.
What are the benefits in terms of security?
A password manager generates strong passwords and facilitates their use. If you want, they can be so strong that you can't even remember them. But you don’t have to remember them anyway, since your password manager will do that for you.
In addition, using a password manager will provide for more variety of your passwords, and as everybody knows, more variety means increased resistance. If one of your passwords is “exposed”, not all is automatically lost.
Are there any risks?
Of course there are risks. Malware on your device could for instance wait for you to unlock your password manager and then steal all of your passwords. You should therefore protect your device with the 5 steps for your digital security to minimise any such risks. You should also consider that malware could end up capturing your access data one day anyway, even without the use of a password manager.
Still sceptical?
Our article on Protecting online access will provide you with more information on this topic. We also list the best-known (and sometimes free) password managers there.
Tip: Next to passwords, you can also use a password manager to securely store other kind of “secrets”, for instance credit card information or notes.