Few sounds are more familiar in the modern office than the plight of the unfortunate individual who has forgotten a password. That audible combination of coffee cup spluttering, muttered obscenities and increasingly loud keyboard tapping seems universally characteristic worldwide.

With the dizzying array of accounts most of us access on a daily basis, use of some form of password management software is almost becoming a necessity – lest we perform the cyber sin of using the same password for multiple accounts, or worse still, hiding password reminders in ingenious locations (under a keyboard, in the back of a diary).

1Password 4 is a handy little smartphone app that allows for storage of passwords, financial account details and any other information deemed sensitive in a file controlled via a straightfoward user interface and protected by a single master password.

When set this master password acts to encrypt the stored details with strong 256-bit AES (Advanced Encryption Standard) symmetric-encryption. This type of encryption is extremely difficult for a cyber criminal to break and rather too time-consuming (we’re talking millions of years) to decrypt using a brute-force attack.

Entry of the master password also offers the ability to be automatically logged into all of your commonly visited websites using stored details; a safer alternative to the ‘keep me logged in’ service offered by many websites.

1Password 4 is available for synchronised use across Apple, Windows and Android platforms.