{"id":39335,"date":"2020-03-26T12:50:27","date_gmt":"2020-03-26T08:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.msp360.com\/resources\/?p=39335"},"modified":"2025-11-21T14:24:50","modified_gmt":"2025-11-21T10:24:50","slug":"password-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.msp360.com\/resources\/blog\/password-management\/","title":{"rendered":"Password Management Best Practices for MSPs"},"content":{"rendered":"

The global cybersecurity landscape is evolving and continues to grow more dangerous by the day. More and more hackers are exploiting the relationship between organizations and their MSPs to compromise IT assets.<\/p>\n

Since MSPs have unfettered access to their clients\u2019 IT environments, gaining control of MSP remote management consoles provides attackers with access to privileged credentials. Given this risk, MSPs need to secure credentials and enforce password management best practices to prevent attackers from exploiting their clients.<\/p>\n

To help you get started, let\u2019s take a look at some password management best practices for MSPs.<\/p>\n

Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)<\/h2>\n

While MFA<\/a> was a \u201cnice-to-have\u201d feature in the past, it has become a \u201cmust-have\u201d in the face of today\u2019s sophisticated cyberthreat landscape. If the software you or your clients use comes with multi-factor authentication, never turn it off. Be sure, too, to educate clients on the benefits of MFA and on how they can take advantage of it to ensure secure access to business-critical data and applications.<\/p>\n

To get the most out of MFA, consider taking a layered approach to password security by leveraging biometrics, code-generating\/hardware tokens, and other criteria (where possible) to ensure that there isn't a single point of failure in your IT ecosystem.<\/p>\n

Further reading<\/span> Two-Factor Authentication: Solutions, Methods, Best Practices<\/a><\/p>\n

Employ a Password Generator Tool<\/h2>\n

The best passwords are randomized strings of text containing lower and upper case letters, as well as special and alphanumeric characters.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since users have to create such random passwords for every account they own, they may have trouble remembering all the passwords \u2014 and as such, they end up creating passwords using text they can easily remember. To simplify this process, enterprises should use a password generator tool to create truly random strings based on character type requirements and length.<\/p>\n

Use Centralized Access Management for Privileged Credentials<\/h2>\n

As an MSP, not only do you hold privileged passwords for your organization, but you also have access to those of your clients as well. To reduce the risk of malicious activities on company and clients\u2019 businesses, MSPs need to centralize password management to see who is accessing what credentials and when they accessed them.<\/p>\n

A centralized password management solution gives you full control over all credentials and allows you to grant access to admins on a case-by-case basis. No admin should have access to all privileged credentials. Also, a centralized solution helps in tracking and logging the access history of IT admins. Once an IT admin leaves, you can pull the history of all the credentials accessed and change them.<\/p>\n

Further reading<\/span> IAM vs PAM vs PIM: Guide to Access Management<\/a><\/p>\n

Rotate Passwords<\/h2>\n

Your password management policy must include rules on how often your IT admins and client employees should change their passwords. Create and enforce policies that govern the rotation of passwords for the following accounts:<\/p>\n