If you’re a business owner, you’d know how difficult it is to keep up with the abundance of passwords for everything.
From social media to email accounts to online banking to business tools, the average business owner has to remember an overwhelming number of passwords.
Thankfully, there’s a solution for that – password managers.
A password manager is a tool that helps users store and manage their passwords in a secure way,
And with the best password managers, like 1Password, you can securely log in to sites and fill out online forms with just a single click.
In the guide below, we’ll explain everything you need to know about password managers and how your organization can use one to experience the full benefits they can provide.
What Is A Password Manager?
A password manager acts as a hub for all your passwords, regardless of the account type. You can use it to store the passwords of your bank accounts, social media accounts, or even the personalized passwords of your employees.
Once you’re done feeding all the data, the password manager gives you a master password that is only accessible to you. You’ll need to enter this password whenever you wish to access the rest of them, ensuring privacy and security.
You don’t have to worry about your passwords not being safe, though, because the master password allows you singular access. Nobody apart from you should know the master password, so even if the platform is hacked at any time, the hacker won’t be able to go anywhere near your password-related data.
Password managers like 1Password are readily available regardless of location, so if you’re a business owner, you might want to start looking for one immediately. Instead of remembering a bunch of passwords, you only need to remember one and can extract the others any time you want!
This also means that your passwords are protected because they’re tucked behind security measures, as opposed to being easily accessible because they’re written in a notebook or elsewhere.
How Does A Password Manager Work?
The critical component in the working of a password manager is your master password. The platform stores no related information and gives you exclusive access only if you enter it correctly. They put a unique zero-knowledge architecture to use, which helps you navigate your passwords through client-centric encryption.
All your passwords are safely stored in one place, which saves you the hassle of managing them yourself. You can log into your password manager using either the site, browser extension, or the mobile app, depending on your platform.
Many password managers such as 1Password use military-grade level cipher (256-bit AES encryption) to ensure that your account is not accessed by anybody other than you. The same platform will also give you a heads-up if any of your passwords appear weak or too obvious.
Most people tend to keep their passwords as easily as possible so they don’t have any trouble remembering them. This is a great security hazard because an easy-to-crack password is an open invitation to cyberattacks and hackers. Not with password managers, though, because they help you decide on a password that is not easy to crack under any circumstance.
Why Should Your Organization Use A Password Manager?
Cyberattacks are becoming more popular by the day across the world. The most common practice of hackers is to attack small or famous businesses because they know they’d get a good ransom out of it. A simple phishing incident can have adverse effects on the whole company and to the extent that even the personal details of your employees will be at stake.
Choosing a password manager for your company can protect you from such incidents and strengthen your company’s overall monitoring. If you have all of your passwords in one place, the chances of mishaps or screw-ups automatically lessen by a large margin. It also helps you identify problematic devices before they can do any harm.
For example, if a computer or any other device fails to maintain your company’s security, a password manager can detect it immediately. This will help you rule out any possible damage caused by the device and nullify the future effects by replacing the device.
It doesn’t matter if you’re a newbie in the market or a business giant. Staying vary of potential thefts and threats is always beneficial in the long run. The masterminds behind cyberattacks don’t care much about the popularity of your brand; if your company has a weak security system, you’re bound to be their next victim.
An estimated 60% of business owners end their ventures because they fail to recover from a cyber-attack.
The finances required to survive in the market are often too exuberant to even be considered by small business owners. In such cases, it becomes essential to make your security measures as concrete as possible because you never know when you can get hit by a hacker.
Companies also have passwords that multiple people require, and sharing credentials with so many people and devices can be quite a risky business. A simple blunder of jotting down a password on a sticky note by your employee can lead to substantial long-term damage because you cannot monitor who decides to use it negatively.
Password managers like 1Password have vaults available which you can share with your team workers. These make it super easy to organize your passwords and bring all your employees to one page. Non-encrypted records are always risky, so make sure you don’t end up relying on excel files or notebooks for remembering your passwords!
Types Of Password Managers
The two most common types of password managers are cloud-based and desktop-based managers. Let’s have a look at both of them:
Desktop-Based Password Managers
They store your data on the device you’re using. The vault is created on your laptop and is fully encrypted. If you’re scared of putting your data on web pages, then desktop-based storage can be an excellent option.
Cloud-Based Password Managers
On the other hand, Cloud-Based Password Managers work with your service provider to store your passwords. The network already provides hosts with the vault created by password managers and allows you to access from any device, as long as you surpass the verification process.
Benefits Of Using A Password Manager
To help inform your choice, here are all the factors that highlight the pros of a password manager.
1. One password as opposed to the many
With password managers, you only have to memorize your master password. All the other passwords can be safely stored and extracted whenever needed. This reduces the hassle of keeping all the passwords in one place and gives you better control over them.
2. They can help you decide on a password
If you’re having trouble coming up with a strong password, leave it to your password manager! With tons of data under their belt, they can help you generate a strong, unique password and no connection with the dark web. For example, the passwords produced by password managers like 1Password are way too hard to crack, ruling out even the slightest chance of any online thefts or phishing incidents.
3. They can immediately detect scams
Password managers can smell a phishing site from miles away. Since the success of a phishing scam relies on you entering your credentials, there is no question of damage because your password manager won’t auto-fill the details. If a website appears dodgy or spammy in any way, you’d be alerted there and then.
4. Your details are cared for even after your death
If, due to any unforeseen, you die without transferring your vault to anybody trusted, password managers have you covered. You can select a beneficiary just in case, and once the verification processes are done, your details will automatically be handed over under digital inheritance. This is a significant feature for business owners because if you die without letting anyone in on the master password, all your company’s credentials will have to suffer.
5. They reduce the chances of identity theft
Since password managers help you craft unique passwords for each account, there’s no way that any hacker gets access to more than one account of yours, that too after numerous tries.
6. Time saving and reliable
Password managers help reduce the time you’d otherwise spend creating and memorizing passwords. You don’t have to keep track of anything apart from your master password, and memorizing one thing is far easier than remembering many at the same time. This also ensures maximum security because the data is encrypted and only accessible to you.
What Makes Password Managers Secure?
Before you start doubting the performance of password managers, let’s go through some key points which make them secure:
1. Zero-knowledge architecture
As mentioned before, most password managers rely on zero-knowledge architecture to ensure complete confidentiality. The term means exactly what you’re thinking: even the company employees won’t have any knowledge about your master password. No version of your master password is recorded except for the encrypted one. This means that your vault and its contents can solely be accessed by you, which ensures maximum security.
2. Strong encryption
The password managers which use AES 256-Bit Encryptions are not to be doubted. This is because it’s the strongest there is. It is used around the world for information that requires top-notch security; hence, if your password manager has the same encryption, you know that it’s the best deal for you.
3. Verification
Even if a hacker manages to get hold of your master password, he still won’t be able to get to your data. Password managers have a couple of authentication steps to ensure it’s the vault owner who’s asking for access. You will be asked for fingerprint or face recognition after you enter your master password, which means that any foreign entity trying to break into your account won’t have much success.
4. Much more reliable
It is safer to trust a password manager with your passwords as opposed to memorizing them all. For all you know, you might end up forgetting one or two or mixing up a couple of them, which is a recipe for disaster. You don’t have to stress your brain to memorize complex passwords because platforms like 1Password can easily do that for you!
Getting Started
Once you’ve finally decided to rely on a password manager, make sure you pay attention to all the little details involved in getting the platform to work for you.
The first thing you need to take care of is renewing all your passwords. Take help from a password manager like 1Password to set up unique passwords and make sure you keep updating them regularly. You wouldn’t want ex-employees to know the details of your vault, so make sure that you change them as soon as they leave.
All you need now is to introduce the password manager to your teammates and make memorizing passwords a thing of the past!
