Why your IT budget should include a company password manager

Introducing password security to your company is an important investment to safeguard your sensitive credentials, protecting the IT team, executives, and all employees. Read on to discover the value of a company password manager and how you can put your IT budget to great use.

We constantly read about data breaches these days, and those are just the stories in the news. 

The latest 2023 Passwords Decisions Survey found that cybersecurity attacks are on the rise, with 60% of companies reporting they’ve experienced one. Additionally, 90% of employees admit to reusing passwords for multiple accounts. These two facts alone highlight the importance of a company password management solution.

IBM and Ponemon Institute recently reported that the average cost of a data breach is $9.48 Million, inclusive of opportunity cost, ransom, legal fees, and reputation impact. And the reality is 86% of cyberattacks are credential-related, which is why a company password manager remains a critical layer of every IT stack. 

Enterprise password protection provides employees the tools to create, manage, and share strong and unique passwords for every account––safeguarding your company against cyber threats and reducing the chances of costly security breaches.

The benefits of a business password manager go beyond protection. Bitwarden, for instance, enhances employee productivity by:

• Facilitating encrypted password and file sharing with teammates, contractors, and customers

• Reducing time wasted on password resets and manual logins

• Generating strong passwords that can be immediately stored in an end-to-end encrypted vault (and accessible on any browser or device)

• Streamlining employee onboarding with automated password generation and communication

Password managers are a cost-efficient and valuable security solution, so when it comes to investing in security with your IT budget, you should consider introducing Bitwarden to a core team for evaluation.

When considering how to allocate your IT budget to enhance business security, start by considering which teams might find a company password manager most useful. For instance:

• IT and operations teams have a lot of credentials that they need to share securely amongst themselves and others.  Also, they are usually involved in testing new software and can help figure out which strategy for managing collections and user groups works best for your company, then, they can work with internal training teams to help outline an employee adoption strategy.

• Finance representatives handle sensitive business documents on a daily basis and have a regular need for storing passwords securely and sending encrypted files of high priority.

• Human Resources manages a database containing private employee information that should be handled carefully and securely. Securing those accounts with strong, unique passwords is critical.

• Marketing often has dozens to hundreds of shared logins to keep track of, which makes them a prime use case for a simple and secure password-sharing solution.

If other teams, such as engineering, are interested in securing their infrastructure with a company password manager, you can expand anytime.

Starting with a select team to explore the capabilities of your company’s new password management solution is a great way to gain a better understanding of your business needs and policies. 

For example, many Bitwarden business customers start by creating a plan for their IT department to kick off the evaluation process. This enables the IT team to immediately begin experimenting with creating workflows for their everyday activities, such as onboarding new employees, which requires the generation of new passwords or sending secure information. During this trial period, it also helps to determine which policies the company would like to enable and standardize across the organization. 

In addition to password management policies, participants in a Bitwarden pilot program should also experiment with Groups, Collections, User Management, and Bitwarden Send. Bitwarden has also developed a proof of concept guide to help get started.

Another advantage to running a pilot through the IT department is the value of their expertise when it comes to deploying across your entire organization. Having a team of experts ready to assist with expansion and rollout is essential to giving your employees the support and training needed to successfully integrate the solution into their daily activities.

Starting a Bitwarden pilot program is simple. Cloud-hosting is included so it’s easy to evaluate right away without having to invest in additional infrastructure. Billing is on a per-seat basis, so you can start the program at whatever size you like. Also, there’s no penalty if you decide on a different solution because your information is always accessible and can be easily exported by an admin for use elsewhere. Finally, Bitwarden business plans come with a free trial so you can see if Bitwarden will meet your company’s needs even before you begin.

If you have not already invested in a company password management solution, doing so is affordable for any size budget. Bitwarden offers annual business plans that start at just $4 a month per user for Teams and $6 a month per user for Enterprise. 

Bitwarden Enterprise plans come with the added benefit of a complimentary family plan for all business end users—a perk many employees appreciate! If your business plans to onboard hundreds to thousands of end-users, contact the Bitwarden team to learn about enterprise pricing options. 

Ready to strengthen your IT security stack next year?  Learn more about Bitwarden for business today at bitwarden.com/products/business.

Editor's note November 2023: Data breach costs and statistics updated with most recent information.