Yoodley is reader-supported. When you buy through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Whether you’re barely online or make your living with e-commerce, there’s likely an account or ten you can’t afford to lose. Password managers promise to safeguard your passwords and make them impenetrable. How can you choose the most reliable one, though? Consider the following five hallmarks of competent password management tools to find the one that will boost your account security the best. 

State-of-the-art Encryption

Password managers ask you to entrust your most sensitive information to them, so anything other than the most advanced means of securing it is unacceptable. They do this through encryption, which scrambles your password info and makes it unreadable without an encryption key. 

256-bit AES used to be the encryption standard for password manager providers. Hackers keep developing countermeasures, which have resulted in successful breaches before. The most advanced managers have adopted more modern forms of encryption like XChaCha20, a more secure stream cipher. 

Lastly, the best password managers adhere to a zero-knowledge policy. That means they store the passwords and any other data you encrypt but don’t know its contents.

Secure Password Generation

Encrypted storage is pointless if the passwords themselves are weak. Password managers can generate unique and complex passwords for any linked account. They’ll let you specify the length and types of characters used, ensuring that a password is always compatible and unambiguous. 

Autofill is a convenient associated feature. Whether you use iOS or Android, password manager apps with integrated browser plugins on your desktop provide the most secure way to access and use stored passwords. Ideally, you’ll only want to remember the master password while the manager takes care of the rest.

Two-Factor Authentication 

The most secure password is the one only you and your password manager of choice know. Sadly, people will write theirs down or share them, potentially rendering even password manager-generated ones a security risk. The bet managers account for this with two-factor authentication.

2FA introduces another security check you need to pass before gaining account access. It can be a code you get via SMS / an authenticator or confirmation through biometrics. Either way, the point is to have a failsafe you can access to keep unsafe passwords from compromising associated accounts.

Secure Synchronization

Any password manager worth considering needs to be a comprehensive solution. That means it should work seamlessly on desktop or mobile regardless of your OS preference. Managers store all your encrypted credentials on the cloud. Internet access is all you need to maintain a synchronized vault wherever you go. 

Additional Features

The most successful password managers go above and beyond this tool’s core functionality. For example, they provide a vault for storing other information as securely as your passwords. They may send reminders to change old passwords or even analyze your accounts to see if they’ve been involved in data breaches.

Conclusion

Not all password managers offer the same level of security and sophistication in handling your sensitive credentials. Now that you know what to look for, you can more easily adopt one that ticks all the right boxes.