Last Pass:  Password Management

The most powerful password management system add-on for your browser, period!

Last Pass is a password management tool that allows you to save yourself a great deal of time punching in your username and password on every site you have an account on.  And, lets face it, we all have many online accounts today.  Managing and remembering your username and password can be quite cumbersome.  As always, the general rule of thumb is to make a really strong password.  Then, that very strong password (known only to you) can be used across all of your accounts.  This practice should be done while updating the password to an equally strong password once every six months.  Last Pass can help with these changes.

Last Pass helps you manage your websites and online accounts for various users

Imagine you were a web developer.  You may have literally hundreds of websites that are managed by some sort of content management system or another.  Each one of those systems requires at the bare minimum one user.  Then, if you want to add more users and manage them it can become even messier.  In this case, it would be nice to have a system to manage all of the users and the passwords and who can see exactly what.  Last Pass enables you to share “sites” via email with another individual.  By accepting this invitation, the invited person is able to log-in to whatever page you gave them access to.  They may or may not be able to see the password for that log-in depending on what level of permission you gave to them.  If you want them to have access but do not want them to be able to see the password, or share it, then you can manage that through the permissions for that share.

The power of managing users and passwords is huge at an enterprise level.  Only the administrators should have access to the passwords and they should delegate those credentials to users as necessary.  Because of this structure users are not allowed to just give the access out to anyone they want to.  They receive the shared credentials, but are not able to re-share them.  Another reason this is a benefit for company’s, is the fact that only one password needs to be replaced when an administrator leaves.  Then that administrator is taken off of the list.  The credentials are then re-sent to every other users email with the permissions you set for them.  Updates can be made in a matter of minutes on a global and site-wide level.  That is powerful.

Last Pass can help you personally manage all of your day to day online accounts

Most people just use the internet for managing their bills, checking their social media, logging into their bank account, emails, etc.  Each time you want to access one of your accounts you must first put in a username and password.  This takes a few seconds to begin with and also makes you totally rely on knowing that information.  Lets face it, all of us have been there where we try to log-in to an account we need to get information from but it has been 6 months or so since we last logged in and we don’t remember the password anymore.  Well, Last Pass does and if you actually want to know for yourself, you can log-in to your Last Pass account online and look for that site.  Then, you can see exactly what the username and the password is for that site.  So, it makes password recovery not only a possible endeavor, but a quick and painless one.  Cruising around the internet and flying through your account sign in pages with remembered sites via Last Pass will literally put hours of time back into your schedule every year.  And that time really adds up!

So what are any downfalls?

The only downfalls may be getting properly familiar with the system.  Essentially, eliminating your own operating error.  Another downfall (not exactly a downfall) is that you must password protect your computer that is running Last Pass.  If you do not protect the computer with a password, then anybody can use the internet and have access to all of your online accounts.  Security is a must when using Last Pass and you must protect your computer with a log-in code.  For some tips by Microsoft on how to create a strong password click here.

Want to get the most out of LastPass? Read our recent blog post for even more tips and tricks!

Tags: lastpass, security