What is the best password manager for small teams in 2021?

A quick Google search will reveal just how many password managers are on the market today. While a few big names tend to dominate the discussion, there are plenty of options out there, and it is worth taking the time to work out which option is best suited to your specific needs.

Small teams can benefit just as much as multinational corporations from using password managers to secure their accounts. Below, we have compiled a list of the best password managers for small teams and explain why these vital tools are so important for any modern business, regardless of the number of people it employs.

Why your team needs a password manager

Password managers are essential tools for the modern era. They are invaluable for securing personal and professional accounts. Like any other experienced cybersecurity business, we strongly advise all our clients to use password managers wherever possible. Whether you opt for each employee to use their own individual password manager or invest in a multi-user solution, using password managers to generate passwords and log in to secure systems enhances your entire network’s security.

Don’t rely on human memory

Most people either use a series of relatively insecure passwords to access their accounts, or they use a single secure password for everything. Without the aid of a password manager, few of us can remember unique, secure passwords for every account we have.

Businesses often generate secure passwords for their employees to use, but secure passwords are inherently more difficult to remember than our pets’ names, birthdays, or other common insecure password choices. As a result, people take to writing their passwords down, thereby undermining their benefits.

Password managers generate random secure passwords and remember them for the user. Instead of remembering separate passwords for everything, users only need to remember the master password for the password manager.

Guaranteed secure passwords every time

Password managers allow users to specify the parameters for the passwords they generate, including the number of characters and the ratio of letters, numbers, and symbols.

Store other key information securely

Password managers are designed to store sensitive information securely. This makes them suitable for more than just passwords. Many password managers allow the user to customise entries, making them useful for storing payment information and other important data that need the same protections as passwords.

Manage shared accounts

With a password manager, each team member can share the same login credentials without any of them ever knowing the actual password. By regularly changing the password manager’s master password, you can control access to the associated accounts without having to worry about changing all your passwords when you revoke one person’s access.

What is the best password manager for small teams?

We have collated the following list of the best password managers for small teams in 2021. Any of the following password managers will enable businesses to easily secure their networks and improve their cybersecurity practices.

Dashlane

Dashlane is one of the most popular password managers available and with good reason. It caters equally well to individual users and businesses of all sizes. The diverse feature set includes an employee dashboard and intuitive admin console, making this one of the best options for overseeing multiple users.

Dashlane also integrates seamlessly with existing IT systems, and the robust admin console ensures team leaders can easily manage the teams they are responsible for.

Above all else, Dashlane is simple. Everyone can get to grips with what Dashlane offers and how it works within a few minutes.

1Password

1Password is another easy-to-use password manager that comes with a wide-ranging feature set and does just about everything you could possibly ask of a password manager. 2FA support further enhances account security and acts as a failsafe should your master password be compromised.

1Password also provides options to integrate with third-party apps. Team managers and IT support staff can see when users log in to their 1Password accounts. Password vaults can be organised so that only authorised members can access specific vaults. This makes managing permissions granularly simple for admins.

LastPass

If you’re looking for the password manager that gives admins the most control over users, LastPass is the way to go. The admin board is intuitive and easy to use while allowing for deep customization of user permissions and in-depth activity monitoring.

With LastPass, you can configure specific login requirements, such as enabling users to access the password vaults from specified locations and devices. You can even restrict access to LastPass to devices in your offices, forbidding any remote access to your most sensitive vaults.

PassCamp

PassCamp is a joy to use. The streamlined interface makes this by far the most user-friendly password manager we’ve seen. Less tech-savvy teams will appreciate how easy PassCamp makes everything without ever compromising the security of your passwords or sensitive information.

However, as always, that ease of use comes with a price. PassCamp lacks many of the more advanced features of its competitors, which will make it a non-starter for some businesses. On the other hand, businesses that find the more robust feature sets of other password managers overwhelming will feel right at home. There’s no sense in paying for features you will never use.

Passportal

Passportal is on a par with the best in this review. Its strength is company-wide management and reporting at an affordable price point. With some nice features aimed squarely at business password management and centralised password control. Features include credential discovery for Active Directory, automation for routine maintenance, role-based access control, auditing and reporting. Every account has its own personal password vault as well as access to shared vaults based on centrally managed permissions which is useful when there is no choice but to securely share a password with a colleague

One of the features we really like is when an employee leaves the business Passportal provides a list of business passwords that the user had access to and had viewed so that these passwords can be changed.

Next steps

The choices listed above represent some of the best password managers currently available for small teams in 2021. But with new options continually emerging and existing password managers receiving major updates, this list is always evolving. In simple terms, any password manager is better than no password manager.

At IT Foundations, we think that the requirements for password management in businesses are so important that we provide our own co-branded version of Passportal to our customers free of charge as part of their IT support service. We want our customers to be as secure as possible, making it easy to follow best practice and discouraging bad password habits.

If you need advice on which password manager to use, or help with any other aspect of your business’s cybersecurity, contact us today to find out how we can help you. We have helped numerous businesses in the Edinburgh area to improve their cybersecurity and secure their networks from common threats.

Don’t wait until it’s too late; contact us today to find out more.