Why are password managers considered good security practice when they provide a single entry for an attacker to get all of your credentials?

Question

Why are password managers considered good security practice when they provide a single entry for an attacker to get all of your credentials?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Imagine, if you would, a medieval town.

You have two options. You put a massive wall around it and have a single point of failure – the gate, heavily fortified and defensible – or you just don’t bother with a wall and have a dozen or more points of failure.

This is similar. A password manager allows you to have good passwords everywhere (that’s the wall), and you just need one really strong master password (that’s the gate).

Without a password manager, your passwords are either all going to be really weak so you can remember them, or written down in clear text somewhere.