Password Managers – 6 key benefits
Passwords are a part of all of our professional and personal lives, a “necessary evil” – but they don’t have to be a chore to use effectively. By utilizing password managers, your organization can take the chore out of effective password usage, as well as capture some powerful HR benefits, and reduce overall anxiety in times of stress around I.T. credential management.
Here are 6 key benefits to adopting a password manager in your organization.
1. Protection against threats from 3rd parties
2. Ease of employee termination
3. Ease of employee replacement
4. Sharing of Credentials
5. Standardization of password documentation
6. Eliminate lost passwords
Protection against threats from 3rd parties
The first and foremost benefit of a password manager is protecting yourself and your company against threats from 3rd parties. We cannot dictate what steps, measures, metrics, and processes our suppliers, clients, and competitors will choose to utilize in their cybersecurity stance. We can however limit the risk to ourselves from a potential breach of their system.
The major risk within our ability to limit is that from password reuse. Password reuse is exactly as it sounds – it is when an organization allows its staff to reuse a password, or follow a similar format for password creation.
This is a risk because if we use the same or similar passwords for all systems, and one of those systems is compromised, a malicious actor can use our compromised I.T. credential to access other more important systems (like our company data or bank).
If our organization uses a password manager to create randomized, unique passwords for each system we access, we have limited the risk to our organization to only what that system can impact.
Ease of employee termination
Password managers have benefits outside of the reduction of 3rd party risk – They have HR benefits as well. If a user has access to a multitude of systems, and the use of randomized, unique passwords in combination with a password manager is enforced as company policy, the company can eliminate most systems access immediately by removing access to the password management system. In the case of an unexpected termination, this can buy valuable time for the I.T. team to properly deactivate and/or transfer the system accounts to other staff in the organization.
Ease of employee replacement
Taking the previous example one step further – password managers can also help in a situation of graceful employee replacement. If Sue is our receptionist and is moving on from the organization in a planned fashion, the password manager can be used to transfer Sue’s accounts to Bill, the new receptionist. On Sue’s last day, her access to the password manager is transferred to Bill. Bill can now log in as Sue into each system, update the information to his own, and take over her duties without the hassle of setting up each individual system in the proper way.
This allows Bill to hit the ground running without multiple calls to multiple suppliers to gain the appropriate access.
Sharing of Credentials
Sometimes you may have the need for multiple people to be able to access the same credential. Perhaps it is a shared I.T. administrative account, or a shared log in to a supplier website. With a password manager you can:
- Create a group of people in your organization
- Document the credential
- Share access to the credential to the group
If one person updates the password, all users immediately have access to the new password. No productivity is lost due to a password change.
Standardization of password documentation
It is useful to highlight the organizational efficiency gained by using password managers: passwords are stored in the same place, in the same way. This means that everyone knows how to retrieve a credential, everyone knows where to look for a password, and everyone can optimize their workflow around the system.
As with all process that gets adopted in an organization, whenever an I.T. action can be standardized it allows for efficiencies to be gained for the organization, improving productivity and increasing quality.
Eliminate lost passwords
A final benefit of password managers is that if everything is documented in the system you can’t “lose” the password. It is never convenient to lose a password, losing one when you need to it restore a system or in a crisis makes it even worse. Having those passwords documented in a central, secure, accessible repository is good business and I.T. sense.
The benefits of a password manager vary from security to efficiency to HR. These six are some of the most impactful Doberman has identified over the years. If you’re struggling around using a password manager or have questions on implementation, we’re here to help. Click Here to Schedule some time with our team today!