As our communication, data and money (in that order) went electronic, it became utterly essential that they were secured with a counterpart of the conventional safe. Encryption was the safe, and passwords became the keys. But with passwords required for N number of online services, the pocket (read memory) was eventually going to get too heavy with these keys. Writing down your passwords is one option, but it has its own risks. Another option is storing them in another place with more security, and KeePass Password Safe is the software that can do this. Besides being the best in the business, it is free and open-source.
KeePass creates .kdb files (secure databases), each of which can hold multiple accounts’ usernames and passwords. You can open these files anywhere using a password or/and a key file. The .kdb files are encrypted using two of the most powerful encryption algorithms out there, Twofish and AES, with the latter being the most powerful public encryption algorithm.
One of the better features of software is that it tells you how safe your master password is. It also tells you how safe the passwords of your accounts are. It can also give you randomly generated passwords, of customizable length and complexity (if you are about to register on a site). This is another reason why we highly recommend this software, as such passwords are essential in safeguarding you on the big bad net.
Being open-source gives this particular safe a distinct advantage. Anyone can read the code and check if there are any loopholes, or incorrect implementations of the encryption algorithms.
Also, like most other open-source software, KeePass is light at around 2MB. You can download KeePass here. The portable version of the software is here.
