What is a Password Manager?
Simply put, password managers are an application that not only stores but manages your passwords for you.
You may already use a password manager of sorts in the form of your web browser. All modern browsers – Edge, Chrome, Firefox, etc. – prompt you to store login information when you sign into websites. You can set up browser accounts or profiles for work and personal use, and these can be synced across different devices (see our guides for Edge, Firefox and Chrome) allowing you to access passwords as well as bookmarks and browsing history.
This is certainly better than keeping your passwords in a spreadsheet or on a post-it note! But there are limitations, as the browser is place to store, rather than manage, your passwords, and there is the possibly of mixing up your personal and business accounts (you should always keep your online personal and business activity separate).
While we are taught never to share our personal passwords, there are occasions when you might need shared access to company accounts. These might include an Amazon account for purchasing stationary, social media, domain control panels, or courier services, where you have one account for the company rather than individual sign ins.
It’s very hard to share passwords when they are stored in your browser without writing them down or emailing them. There is also a very real need, if you are a manager or director, to safeguard your business in the event that you are incapacitated or unavailable.
Step in the Password Manager
There are many password manager applications available. We’ve tried several over the years, but the best by far is LastPass.
LastPass works as an add-on to your browser and runs in the background. Just like the browser, it will prompt you to save new passwords as you enter them. When you return to a site, just click the icon and it will fill in the details for you.
Creating and Saving New Passwords
When you sign into a website, LastPass will prompt you to save that password automatically.
If you are creating a new account and need to set a password, LastPass can do this for you too, and generate a very secure complex password. Don’t worry – since it’s also managing your passwords, you will never need to remember it!
Storing Shared Passwords
Most organisations have a basic structure along the lines of Directors, Management and Operations. There may be other strata as well within these, such as Finance or Senior Operations Managers.
With your basic group structure in place, when we create the user accounts, we can assign them to the relevant group based on their role.
We can also create Folders to store different types of passwords. Permission to access these folders can be assigned to the groups.
When saving passwords, you can choose what folder to store the password in if you want to share it. All members of the group with access to that folder will have access to it.
Keeping your Passwords Organised
If you have lots of passwords, you might want to consider a storage or naming convention so you can easily find them, such as creating sub-folders within the shared folders. But don’t let bureaucracy get in the way! Once you have put them into the relevant access folder, you can simply search for them. If you have a good naming convention, this will do away with the need for complex filing systems.
Interested?
This is just a very quick overview of how a password manager can benefit you and your business and help you to be more secure. There are a myriad of other features we don’t have space in this post to cover!
If you are interested in knowing more about how a password manager can benefit your business, do get in touch. Macnamara provides LastPass as either a standalone product or as part of our User Security Pack.
