LastPass will now monitor your accounts for breaches and at-risk passwords and alert you when you need to change them

Lastpass Security Dashboard (Image credit: LastPass)

What you need to know

LastPass today gained a new Security Dashboard and dark web monitoring.
Users will be told if they have passwords that are at-risk and when two-factor authentication is available.
They'll be notified if any of their accounts are compromised and shared online, too.

LastPass, now owned by LogMeIn, today added a couple of new features that will not only make it easier to check which passwords need attention but will also proactively notify users if an account has been compromised. The new Security Dashboard and dark web monitoring features are live right now.

Kicking things off with the new Security Dashboard, LastPass is putting everything into a single view to make it easier than ever to make sure people have an idea of exactly which accounts have poor passwords. They'll also be shown which accounts have two-factor authentication available, too. The use of two-factor authentication is vital across any and all websites and services that support it and it really should be used wherever possible.

All of this information will be distilled into a single security score for easier reading and understanding – the higher the score, the more secure you are.

Your security score is calculated automatically by evaluating all of your stored site passwords in your Vault. If there are passwords that are considered unsafe (i.e., weak, reused, old, or missing), you are advised to change the site password in order to maintain good password hygiene. As more site passwords are added and evaluated, your security score updates and shows you how your passwords measure up with security best practices, and prompts you to make any updates needed.

The new Security Dashboard is available to all LastPass users now.

The addition of a new dark web monitoring feature, available to all LastPass Premium, Families, and Business customers, is a big and welcome change. LastPass will now keep track of all users' accounts and notify them if one appears in a data breach.

The dark web monitoring feature evaluates all of your stored email addresses for the items in your Vault, and alerts you immediately – via email notification and within the Security Dashboard – if any of your email addresses have been found in the database of breached credentials. If you have compromised email addresses, you are guided through steps to change your password for the site associated with the breach. You can also manage the email addresses you want to exclude from being monitored

Both new features are available now and users can check out the LastPass website for all the details, too.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too.

Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.