November 2025
Welcome to the first issue of our monthly security tips! Thank you for learning more about how to keep yourself and our campus safer online. We hope you find the tips valuable and will share them with your colleagues (and encourage them to subscribe!). Now, let’s get to those tips already...
Tip #1: Don’t Reuse Passwords
Reduce, reuse, and recycle are not the best approaches when creating passwords. But let’s face it, it’s hard to remember all our logins, and you might sneak in a few recurring ones here and there. You aren’t alone, but know that when you reuse passwords, you risk exposing multiple accounts. Plus, you’d be surprised how easy and fast it is to break a simple password
Where to Start?
Use a password manager. This tool generates and securely stores long, unique passwords for your online accounts. Password managers also have a helpful feature that can warn you about unsafe sites by comparing the URL to the correct one stored in your vault, and can prevent autofill—or even display a warning—on fake sites. At Berkeley, we offer LastPass Premium at no cost to you.
Start small: add your most critical accounts (like CalNet!), then proceed with others as you learn the workflow and use the built-in password generator to create new ones along the way.
If you don’t want to use LastPass, here are other reputable options (just to name a few), each has various pricing tiers:
That’s all for this month. Next month, we’ll focus on ways you can spot and report phishing attacks, especially during the holiday season.
You might be curious why we are not recommending you use Google or Apple password managers right now. Here’s the reason: if your browser is compromised, your passwords can also be at risk.