Password Management: Securing Businesses with Small, Yet Mighty Teams

Now more than any other time in history, businesses are working remotely. Going virtual, while enabling collaboration and helping to maintain regular business operations in these trying times, introduces a fair amount of challenges.   

Data shows that businesses with smaller teams have been increasingly targeted by hackers and cybercriminals in recent years. In fact, about one third of the 850 global businesses in this study report suffering a cyberattack in the last year.  

Poor password hygiene in the workplace continues to be a problem. Data shows that employees consistently set basic, formulaic, and recycled passwords that can be easily exploited.  For any organization, this poses a security risk, and can lead to a loss of money, draining of IT resources, and a damaged brand. Businesses adapting to remote working infrastructures should prioritize password best practices to enable their newly remote teams to work efficiently and securely.  

So what’s the first step?  A fast and affordable way to ramp up security for a small yet mighty team is with a password manager. Password managers mitigate the inherent challenges of memorizing dozens of complex passwords by storing users’ passwords in an encrypted vault. Additionally, password managers can generate unique and extremely strong passwords for each online account and service.  

The next step is to enable YubiKey two-factor authentication (2FA) to your password manager to ensure that the passwords in your vault are protected by a physical key, regardless of operating system. The YubiKey delivers the strongest, hardware-based defense against phishing and other threats leading to account takeovers. The combined solution of a password manager and a YubiKey is an easy way for businesses to bolster account login security—no matter the size of their team. 

At Yubico, we take pride in our ecosystem of technology partners, a number of whom are password managers and services that advocate for better password management. 

“The workplace is changing more rapidly than we ever imagined, and this brings new security considerations. To keep a tight grip on who can access, amend, and share your data stored using the cloud, it’s best to use a password manager like 1Password in combination with multi-factor authentication.”

— Matt Davey, 1Password COO

“At Bitwarden, we empower individuals, teams, and organizations to store and share sensitive data easily and securely. We are proud to partner with Yubico to build a strong security foundation for our users.”

— Gary Orenstein, Chief Customer Officer, Bitwarden

“Our world and workspaces are changing fast due to the current crisis. Private devices are now used for work, which leaves user credentials at risk and in need of protection. With a smart password manager protected with a YubiKey, you keep important and confidential company data secure.”

— Sergej Schlotthauer, VP Security & Strategic Alliances, Matrix42

“Don’t give attackers a single target. Use a different password everywhere, a different email address, or alias with subscriptions, and protect your accounts with a hardware authenticator. Your other accounts won’t be at risk in the event one account is compromised.”

— Ricardo Signes, CTO, Fastmail

As your business transitions to an increasingly remote working environment, consider investing in a password manager plus the YubiKey for easy to use, hardware-backed 2FA. Want to learn more? Watch our roundtable Q&A with 1Password to hear expert insights and best practices on effective password management.