From generating strong passwords to monitoring the security policies and practices of a company, password managers are powerful solutions that defend companies against cyberthreats and improve employee productivity.

Continue reading to learn more about why password management is critical to every organization’s cybersecurity strategy.

What is a Cybersecurity Strategy?

A cybersecurity strategy is a plan for organizations to secure their assets, reduce their cyber risk and protect against cyberthreats. An effective cybersecurity strategy incorporates multiple layers of security and has solutions in each layer to fortify an organization’s defenses.

Improving Your Cybersecurity Strategy Starts With Employees

Employees often store passwords on sticky notes, in a spreadsheet or other unencrypted electronic documents. These unsafe practices stem from the challenge of trying to remember strong, unique passwords for every online account.

When creating passwords, many employees use birthdays, addresses, names of their pets, their favorite sports team or any number of easily guessable combinations. Employees often give up trying to remember unique passwords and repeat the same password – or a version of it – across several accounts. The danger of reusing passwords is if any account is breached, then cybercriminals immediately have access to every other account that uses the same password.

Password managers are cybersecurity tools that aid employees in generating strong, unique passwords and storing them in an encrypted digital vault, accessible from any device. It removes the burden of having to remember multiple passwords and eliminates the risk of employees using weak passwords or the same password across multiple accounts, which places all company accounts and data at risk.

Make Password Management a Part of Your Cybersecurity Strategy

Here are a few reasons why businesses need to incorporate password management as a part of their cybersecurity strategy.

Provides password visibility 

Most businesses have limited visibility into the password practices of their employees which greatly increases cyber risk. Password managers enable organizations to have visibility over the password hygiene and risk factors that can result in a data breach.

Provides secure password-sharing capabilities

Each user can securely and easily share password records with varying levels of permissions. Shared information is fully encrypted in transit and at rest, ensuring that the record is not exposed at any point.

Increases employee productivity

Password managers increase employee productivity as they eliminate common password-related issues such as excess time searching for passwords, resetting forgotten passwords and contacting the helpdesk for assistance in resetting a password.

A password manager allows employees to take control of their passwords and use a unique, random and high-strength password for each and every site, system and application. Every employee is provided a secure, cloud-based digital vault that stores passwords and any other critical information such as encryption keys and digital certificates. A password manager will also generate strong, random passwords and automatically fill them in for users, which saves time and frustration.

Streamlines onboarding and offboarding processes 

Businesses are constantly changing with new employees starting and current employees moving departments or leaving. It’s impossible for IT teams to manually provision, maintain and log all of the activities needed to keep systems secure and meet compliance standards. As people move throughout the organization, a password manager keeps their access updated. This includes locking an account when an employee leaves and the ability to transfer their vault to a trusted admin.

Enhances SSO solutions

A password manager can enhance Single Sign-On (SSO) by covering gaps such as legacy apps or platforms that don’t function with an organization’s SSO solution.

Helps meet compliance requirements

Password managers are key to meeting global compliance standards and best practices for strong cybersecurity policies. Strong password hygiene and password management systems are integral to any company’s InfoSec policy, regardless of size or industry.

Companies can spend millions on cybersecurity, and many do, but a world-class password manager should be the first investment for formidable, proactive protection.

Source: Keeper Security