How to Protect Your Master Password

Here, we’ll show you how to protect your master password against Brute Force attacks and other security flaws. 

If you use a password manager, then you must already understand that your master password is the most important aspect of it. It doesn’t just protect a single account; it safeguards the entire contents of the virtual vault, which in short holds the pass to your entire digital sphere. Whatever you need a password for, be it your email, social media account, banking apps, and more, your master password holds access to them.

If a breach takes place, it will be catastrophic. One of the most common and dangerous threats to compromise your master password is via a brute-force attack. It’s where hackers use automated software to guess your password through trial and error. If you’re wondering if protecting it against this attack takes just a strong password, you’re wrong. To prevent it, you need to build an unbreachable digital defense. Let’s go through a few ways to improve the security of your master password. 

3 Ways How Passwords Get Hacked

As mentioned, your password is the most valuable piece of information that holds the keys to much more sensitive data. With that said, when you store all your passwords inside one password manager vault and secure it with a master password, that automatically becomes your top priority to protect. However, before getting to the part on how to secure your master password, let’s first talk about how passwords get hacked in general: 

1. Brute Force Attack

This kind of attack is one of the most common and most successful. It’s when the hacker uses bots to repeatedly and randomly enter numerous guesswork passwords, ultimately landing the right one. Now,  a brute-force attack is successful mostly when you already have a weak password, and the hacker finds it easy to guess. This is mostly the case with short and common passwords. 

2. Phishing Scams

Apart from a Brute Force attack, a phishing scam is another one of the most common cyber scams. It’s where a hacker uses emails and texts to get you to click on malicious links. Through this, some questions urge you to provide sensitive information or face consequences. These kinds of attacks compromise passwords. 

3. Malware

This attack often arrives hidden in a harmless-looking email link or attachment. Once installed, it can log everything you type, including your passwords, handing criminals direct access to your private accounts and information.

How to Protect Your Master Password in 5 Ways

You know of the various ways your password can get hacked, but you also know that storing them in a password manager is the best security defence. However, to secure all your passwords in your vault, you need a master password. Here are a few ways you can protect your master password: 

Build a Strong and Unguessable Master Password

The first and most important strategy to protect your master password is the name itself. You might assume that replacing the o with a 0 is a smart move, but brute-force attack software can now decipher it. 

To make the master password stronger, the single best piece of modern security advice is to use a passphrase. A passphrase is a random sequence of words, not a single complex word with symbols. Think Crystal-Tango-Falcon-Uniform-!92 instead of P@ssw0rd!. 

The reason this method works better is that it’s also quite lengthy, which helps prevent brute-force attacks. A passphrase creates a password that is very long (20+ characters) yet surprisingly easy for you to remember. 

However, the randomness of the words is crucial. For instance, it shouldn’t be a famous quote, a song lyric, or a personal detail. You can always use a password manager that generates a truly random string of words.

So, in the future, always create unique, long passwords with a minimum length of 14-16 characters. It makes it incredibly time-consuming to rely on guesswork.

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Now that you’ve created a one-of-a-kind master password, the next step to secure it would be to incorporate multi-factor authentication (MFA). You cannot ever just rely on a master password alone for your password manager.

It works great against Brute-Force attacks, because even if a hacker somehow guesses or steals your master password, they’ll still be stopped dead in their tracks. Why? This is because they will still need verification via a code or a PIN sent to your phone, a physical security key, or a biometric scan.

You can always use an authenticator app like Authy, Google Authenticator, or the one built into your password manager instead of SMS codes. SIM codes are often vulnerable to “SIM-swapping” attacks. So, ensure you set up MFA on your password manager account immediately and keep a backup of your recovery codes in a secure, physical location.

Enable In-App Security Settings

The password manager provider you’re using offers a bunch of security features. Get into its security settings and enable every feature that slows down or prevents future attacks. If you’ve got the rate-limiting and lockout feature, you’d be able to lock an account after a certain number of failed login attempts. This directly helps defeat automated brute-force scripts by cutting them off after 5 or 10 wrong guesses. 

Biometrics for unlocking your account is also crucial. This way, if you enter too many wrong passwords, you can use fingerprint or facial recognition to unlock your vault. Through this, you wouldn’t need to type your master passwords in public. 

If there are more features that your password manager vault offers, tweak them. 

Personal Security Practices

You must understand that even the strongest passwords in the world can be compromised by a single lapse in judgment. In-app and third-party security features are crucial, but your daily security practices help them get stronger. Here are a few practices to indulge in: 

• Always avoid typing your master password in public or while using public WiFi. 
• Never use a public device to sign into your password manager vault. You’d never know what bad actors are on that device. 
• Be vigilant about phishing scams; there are plenty of them going around. You might get an email asking you to click on it to sign in to your password manager vault. Always go through them to see where the source is. 
• Ensure that our password manager app is always up to date. It’s very often that old apps are vulnerable. 

Never Share Passwords With Anyone

The number one rule of passwords is never to share them with anyone. Even with the perfect security in place, you need to be prepared for the unexpected. Once you lose access to your master password, all the other data goes with it. You can always set some security measures in place, like via your manager’s recovery options. The last resort would be to only give your password to an emergency contact you trust.   

Frequently Asked Questions

 

To Conclude

It takes a lot to protect your master password, considering it isn’t just a one-time setup. It’s about understanding that this one credential is the linchpin of your online safety. Once you practice building long, unique passphrases and enforcing MFA among other security practices, it reinforces you to maintain vigilant digital habits.