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My day job, as an infrastructure consultant, necessitates that I need to know lots of different passwords, almost all of which are very important to keep secure - they give me access to business critical systems. Outside of that, I have countless accounts with websites, for shopping, networking, bank accounts, and discussion forums.

As somebody who preaches good password security I was starting to risk being a bit of a hypocrite: I was starting to re-use passwords that I had already committed to memory, in multiple places. Consequently, there was some risk that anybody determined enough, having somehow got hold of my login details for one site, could then go on to gain access to other - far more important - services.

It was therefore with some relief that I found out about 1password, a Mac application that has slotted in to my work flow with such ease, it’s very hard to understand how I possibly got by without it. Using heavy duty encryption for it’s local store (so it’s impossible to use without entering a strong passphrase), it takes care of the hard work of remembering passwords and form filling, and also generates random, highly effective, passwords for you.

Logging on to a website, I now just click the 1Password icon, and enter my standard passphrase (Which is a very long, and secure phrase, that I believe would be almost impossible for anybody to guess). This unlocks the password database, and fills in the forms for me. The password database is periodically re-locked (when, for instance, the screensaver kicks in), so it’s very difficult to use maliciously in an open environment.

I think I’ve freed up a good number of brain cells, and not a lot of stress and worry, about remembering all my passwords. The terror of visiting a website and realising I’d forgotten the password details after months, or even years, without having logged in, is taken away.

It’s taken care of very well, very securely, by this excellent application, I have absolutely no qualms about recommending it to every other Mac user out there. Highly recommended, and probably the best piece of software I’ve so far bought for the Mac.

Plenty more at: http://www.1password.com