The Importance of Educating Your Employees About Password Managers

If you want to keep your business’s cybersecurity as tight as possible, you need to start with education.

Sadly, most people have poor password habits already, with an estimated 65% of people using a single password for all of their accounts.

Can you say easy hack?!

Imagine all of your company’s software and other logins at the mercy of a password like Jane12345. You’re pretty much done for already.

In this guide, we’re going to take a closer look at just how important it is to educate your employees not only on good password habits, but also on why password managers are so important and how to use them to their greatest advantage. With a good password manager, you’re effectively putting up your first wall of defense against hackers. Don’t leave something like that to the mercy of poor passwords!

A Tool Is Only As Good As Its User

The important thing to remember is that even with the best tools available, they’re really only as good as their users. Using a password manager on premise means even if your employees don’t understand why you’re using it, you’re going to make it a part of your arsenal. Regardless, you should still invest the necessary time to ensure your employees understand the importance of the password manager, and why they need to use it. It shouldn’t even be an option, especially if you’re a larger organization. Cybersecurity is such a fragile thing.

Teaching your employees better password habits starts with teaching them to use a good password manager. Good password managers can help you create, store, manager, and share your company passwords in a safe and efficient way. You won’t have to store passwords in that Word doc anymore, or on the company sticky-note stuck to the lobby’s cork board.

If you’re using a browser password manager, it’s time to ditch that and upgrade to something that can actually protect your data. Browser password managers are at the mercy of the browser’s security protocols, which are much easier to hack than a private, encrypted service like Keeper security.

Good Password Habits Are Crucial To Cybersecurity

Most cybersecurity breaches occur because of a compromised password. In fact, in 2019, the world reached a record number of data breaches; sitting at about four billion breached records. That’s a bit terrifying. That means that a number of accounts equivalent to over half of the world’s population were breached, and guess what the common theme was? Bad. Passwords.

That’s right, folks, bad passwords are the bane of cybersecurity, and in this day and age, you simply can’t afford to have a company breach. The average cost of a cybersecurity breach for a business is about $200,000, and that’s on the conservative end of the spectrum. Does your business have $200,000 lying around?

So, teaching your employees about the importance of passwords and your password manager is literally a matter of life and death for small businesses. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that because you own a large corporation, you’re entirely immune to the cyber threats out there. Larger businesses can sometimes be more vulnerable, since there are more parts to the system, which means more places to potentially breach.

Password Managers Make Things More Convenient And Efficient

Aside from making things more secure and generating better passwords, password managers have another crucial function: making things more convenient and efficient.

Let’s be honest—storing passwords securely has been on the backburner for your business for too long.

Sticky notes, Word docs, and other vulnerable storage methods simply won’t cut it anymore. Plus, who wants to have to write down all of your company’s login credentials all the time?

With a password manager, you can save new passwords and credentials with the press of a button, and with the autofill feature, you never have to worry about using the wrong password or typing in credentials manually.

Outside The Business

When you teach employees good password management habits, they become a part of their life, even outside of the business. Having security-conscious employees can only help create a more secure online world overall. When over half the population uses passwords over and over, we need a change. Cyber attacks are more frequent than ever, with billions in damages to small and large organizations every year. Instead of starting at the top, we need to start working from the bottom up to improve cybersecurity, and the first step in that process is teaching employees good password habits.

If you’re not already using a password manager, now is the time to acquire one. With so many options available, you can find one that fits your business needs and budget, and start taking steps towards better security all-around.

Why wait?

Your new cybersecurity tool is just a click away.