The Digitante's Password System…

After taking my sweet time in implementing some stronger passwords, I wanted to make sure I could develop a system that I would stick with and wouldn’t be so cumbersome that I would want to stab myself in the foot.

Here are the tools that I ended up using to get things going:

• KeePass – I wrote about this last night. It is super easy to use and gets praise from all corners of the web.
• KeePass Mobile App – I downloaded the version for my BlackBerry, however, you can get it for the iPhone, PalmOS (should run on the Pre), Android, and there is even a J2ME version which should run on most mobile phones that aren’t smartphones.
• Dropbox – I wrote an initial Dropbox article and then followed it up with some updates including access to Dropbox Mobile. Get a Dropbox now if you don’t have one already.

Get it all setup

The first thing you need to do is when you are setting up KeePass, save your database to your Dropbox. This will allow your KeePass database to be accessible on all computers you have your Dropbox on (the laptop and desktop at my house), as well as via the web and mobile Dropbox (m.dropbox.com).

While that is syncing up, you can install Dropbox and KeePass on any other computers in your household. Additionally you can get your mobile KeePass application installed on your phone. If you have an iPhone, BlackBerry, Palm, or Android phone, you should be comfortable with installing apps on your phone. If you have a regular flip, slide, or candybar phone, you might not be used to installing applications, but it is fairly quick and painless. Simply navigate to m.keepassmobile.com. Note if you don’t have a data plan, you may get charged for data, but the amount of data will be tiny and it shouldn’t cost more than about 10 or 20 cents.

Finish up

Now that you have Dropbox, KeePass, and KeePass mobile installed, wrapping up consists of loading the database which is in your Dropbox into KeePass. On your mobile phone, you will need to take one extra step and download the database from m.dropbox.com first before loading it into KeePass.

If you ever add a new password to the database, it will automatically show up in any other KeePass instances that are directly linked to your Dropbox. However, you will need to re-download the updated database to your mobile phone and re-load it in KeePass.

The concern

As I was talking with colleagues about this setup, concerns kept coming up about the security of keeping your passwords online.

What you need to realize is that your passwords are already stored online. Every site that you login to has your password stored on their server. They should have it encrypted and the company’s employees should never have access to it, but not all companies follow these rules very closely.

As long as you have a strong password on your Dropbox (layer one) and a different, strong password on your KeePass database (layer two), you should be in good shape.

Using strong passwords and keeping them accessible and safe can be a daunting task. Hopefully this will make things easier on you.

Anybody have any recommendations for making this easier? Anybody want to be the tester and get it working on a regular flip phone? Let me know in the comments if you do.