Tutorials

Team Password Management for Business

Believe it or not, passwords are not the most effective security mechanisms. According to George Hardesty, CEO of https://www.data-alliance.net, almost 20% of people use and reuse the same password for all their accounts. And things get much more complex if you need to manage and share various passwords with other team members.

So, how do you manage lots of passwords using a single platform, sharing some of those passwords with your coworkers, and preventing hackers from getting access to confidential company information? Here's what needs to be done, step by step.

1. Go to https://www.lastpass.com/ and sign up for a business account. They offer a free 14-day trial account if you want to test the platform.

2. Set up your master password; it will be used to encrypt all the other passwords. Choose a combination of letters, numbers and symbols with a total length of about 20 characters.

3. Download the LastPass extension for your favorite browser from here - https://lastpass.com/misc_download2.php.

4. Create a new account on one of the sites that you intend to use; we will use https://buffer.com/ for this example. Input the desired username/email address, and then click the LastPass browser extension to generate a unique password for that account.

5. The application will ask if you want to add the Buffer account information to LastPass. Click "Add" to store the Buffer username and password using the password manager.

6. Repeat the steps above for any new account that needs to be protected using LastPass.

7. To improve the security of the existing accounts, log into them using the old passwords, and then update them using the new ones which have been generated by LastPass.

8. To log into an existing account, visit its corresponding website; we will use https://buffer.com/ as an example. The log-in form will display the LastPass icon next to the login fields. Click it, and the application will fill in the needed information for you.

9. To share some accounts with your team members, you will need to create a shared passwords folder using the "Sharing Center" menu entry. Then, click the "Add Shared Folder" button in the bottom right corner of the page.

10. Give the folder a proper name, for example "Social Media".

11. Add the desired sites/accounts to the newly created folder. Simply go to "Sites", and then add what you need to the shared folder.

12. Click "Manage" to invite team members who need to have access to these sites/accounts. You can set their roles as "Read Only", allowing them to use the passwords, or "Administrator", if you want to give them the option to edit usernames, passwords, etc.

That is all! Every team member who has access to the shared folder will now have access to the shared accounts/passwords.