How safe are your passwords?

You have a username and password for TOTAL, and we're guessing you have plenty of other online accounts for your appraisal business that require unique login information. Maybe you're using the same password for your various appraisal accounts. Or maybe you're continually tweaking your "default" password so it's different for every account. Either of these methods creates problems, though. If you use the same password every time, then you're likely to get one (or many) of your accounts hacked. Or, if you change up your password a little bit every time, you probably forget which version of it goes with which account.

One of the best ways to overcome these obstacles, and protect your appraisal business, is to invest in a safe password protection service. We've listed our favorites below. Each is useful and unique in its own way, but some of our favorite qualities are browser importation, instant password replay, and two-factor authentication, to name a few.

LastPass (Free or $12.00 premium service)
LastPass is one of the founding fathers of password protection. With LastPass, you have unlimited storage for both passwords and notes. This service also has protected sharing, and will give you a report of your passwords' strengths. You can download the Free or Premium services for individuals, or the Enterprise level of service for businesses.

Sticky Password (Free or $29.99 for premium service)
Sticky Password offers the world's leading data encryption standard, AES-256. Or in other words, the method used by the military and government organizations to protect their information. P.S. You can also sync your passwords over both local Wi-Fi and Sticky Password cloud servers.

Dashlane (Free or $39.99 premium service)
Dashlane will generate strong passwords for you, so you don't have to worry about coming up with ones that meets the criteria for whatever new account you're opening. Dashlane will also log into your accounts immediately when you arrive to one of the account sites (regardless of what device you're on). And it will even store your payment options and receipts for your favorite shopping sites using their Digital Wallet service.

RoboForm Everywhere (Free or $19.95 for 1-year commercial license)
Roboform acts as a password manager, formfiller, and password generator. It has a search box for finding the passwords for your accounts and apps efficiently, and it will sync your passwords to almost any device. You can get a free trial for 14 days for up to 10 users.

Almost every service online, appraisal or otherwise, requires you to register an account. So, start keeping your passwords safe with one of these amazing password protection services.