Why schools should use a password manager

Passwords are an easy entry point for cybercriminals, and are a simple but important way to keep your school's data secure.

A password manager is an application on your phone, tablet or computer that stores your passwords securely, so you don’t need to remember them. Once you’ve logged into the password manager using a ‘master' password, it will generate and remember your passwords for all online accounts.

The benefit is that you only need to remember one password to access all your login information. It's a safe and secure way to store all your passwords. This allows you to have strong and unique passwords for all the accounts and software you use without needing to remember them.

The National Cybersecurity Alliance (NCA) lists these benefits of a password manager.

• Saves time 
• Works across all your devices and operating systems 
• Protects your identity 
• Notify you of potential phishing websites 
• Alerts you when a password has potentially become compromised 
  

Read their full article.

It is important to take steps to protect your password manager account, for the following reasons.

• if you forget the ‘master’ password for your password manager, you will not be able to access your accounts
• if a cybercriminal accesses your password manager account, they will have access to all of your accounts. Along with the NCA, we recommend two or multi-factor authentication as an extra layer of protection.