As more and more information is stored digitally, data security becomes more important. Criminals and hackers are finding new ways all the time of breaching into password-protected spaces and using that access for nefarious purposes. One of the main methods they use to get in is through obtaining login credentials. As a business, everyone in your employ needs to be careful to avoid letting their password get loose. 

A common cybersecurity rule of thumb is that you never share your credentials with anyone. However, that is not always the reality. There are many instances where one team member will need to share their password with another. It could be that the other person wants to post something on social media. Or, the person filling in for your finance specialist needs to log into your accounting software. When passwords need to be shared, then everyone has to do their part to keep them secure. Here’s how. 

The “Don’ts” of Password Sharing

Before talking about how to properly share passwords amongst staff members, there is a list of things that you should avoid doing at any cost. For one, emailing is not as secure as you might think. Sure, at the moment nobody will see the information except for you and the recipient. However, many emails set up through common providers can be accessed relatively easily. If that happens to you or to your recipient, then your password will be out in the open. 

Even if everyone on staff has proper security clearance, never simply shout your credentials across a crowded office space. Everyone might be trustworthy, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should know your password. This is helpful for keeping to a minimum the amount of people who know any one set of credentials. If there’s an incident, the investigation can narrow in on a smaller group of people. 

Writing down passwords is another no-no. A written record is very vulnerable for anyone who accesses your building. Many people do not take the step of shredding this type of information, meaning that it could be there for the taking in a wastebasket or recycling bin. 

Best Practices

When it comes to sharing credentials, there are few secure options. You should have strong passwords, which means that they are more than eight characters long and contain at least one uppercase and lowercase letter, a special character, and a number. Instead of using a single word that is well-known to you, it is best that you use a phrase instead. In fact, a random selection of numbers, letters, and characters would be best. The problem is that once you have complicated passwords, it gets harder to share them. 

Password Management

This is where your best option comes in. An enterprise password management tool is just what you need to share passwords securely. It keeps everyone’s passwords in a single vault so that they are easy to access by anyone that has the credentials. 

When you are setting up credentials for a password management system, make sure that the password is as difficult as possible. That means using a random selection of inputs or a random selection of words in a row. Nobody should have access to this management tool unless they would reasonably need to use it. 

What Else Does an Enterprise Password Management Tool Do?

A password management tool isn’t just for sharing passwords among co-workers. It can provide a secure way for everyone to manage their passwords, whether they need to share them or not. When you are following best practices for creating passwords, they can be hard to remember. This problem is exacerbated further when workers have many passwords that they need to manage. It would be easy to allow them to choose a simple word for everything, but this is not secure. 

With a management system, users can quickly and easily pull up the credential for any application that they need to access. They only need to remember one complicated password to have access to all of the rest of them. Administrators can monitor all passwords for strength and make changes and edits if need be. When an employee leaves the company, their passwords and credentials can be quickly erased from the tool. 

A password manager allows for security levels and groups to further silo certain departments from the info of others. For example, your sales department does not need to access any passwords from the accounting department. They can still share within themselves, though. If ever sharing is needed between groups, the administrators can make it happen. 

Cyber security requires complete buy-in from everyone in your company. One of the most important aspects is password security. Having strong passwords will help to prevent hackers from getting into your data and using it for illegal things. However, complex passwords are also hard to remember. With a password management tool, you can easily share passwords among employees while still keeping them secure at all times. 

Also Read: Password manager- How it helps to solve password management issues?