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Protecting your system – password management

Professor Nick Patterson demonstrates how to use a password manager. Protect and remember your passwords.
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The very last tool I want to demonstrate today in this video is one where it’s going to allow us to securely store passwords, which we use at different websites and systems. So this last particular tool is called KeePass, so ‘K’, double ‘E’, ‘pass’. It’s a free open source password manager. You can see it there. Let’s load that up. It essentially helps you to manage your password in a secure way. And you put all your passwords in one database, which is then locked with a master key. And the database which stores those actual passwords is encrypted also. So it’s using very strong encryption algorithms to do this. So essentially you’ve got a master password to get into it.
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Plus that actual database file that you’re storing your passwords in is secure also. So we’re opened up to our default interface here. We’re going to create a new database for our passwords. Let’s just use the same password we’ve been using before. This is our master password essentially. And we’re also supposed to repeat it again just to make sure it’s correct.
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Same again. Click OK. So what we’ve got now is a range of different categories here. Let’s just do a quick example of doing this. So we won’t be able to go to the network.
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Essentially go to ‘Add entry’. And we’re going to say ‘customer website server password’. And we’ll just put in username there. It’s probably going to be ‘root’. And we’ll just get rid of this here. And we’ll just go with our same password as before.
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Obviously don’t follow my technique if you’re using these basic passwords for everything. Try to use different passwords for each of these different tools. I’ll just show you there. I’ve used the same one again. You can put down some notes as well. Potentially say login password for the customer website for administration duties. And you ought better put the website in there as well.
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And that’s pretty much it. We’ve got a new entry. It’s all about creating a more secure environment by implementing simple, easy-to-use tools. So on the chance that we are hacked, the impact is going to be far less.

Even though we know the importance of passwords, many of us don’t change them regularly and continue to use passwords like ‘password’ or ‘123456’.

This article from the Entrepreneur covering statistics about password usage provides some insights into bad password practises. Strong secure passwords are a simple but effective step towards better security.

In this video, Dr Nick Patterson demonstrates how to use the password manager KeePass to keep your passwords safe.

Your task

Watch the video and think about how passwords are managed for your business. Are there any formal policies or procedures that outline what structure your password should follow or how often you have to change it? Or is it purely up to individuals?

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