Why Organizations Need Automated Password Rotation

Password rotation has become less necessary for personal accounts if they are protected with strong and unique passwords and MFA. Organizations do need to implement password rotation to protect privileged accounts; however, manually rotating passwords can lead to security risks such as compromised passwords. Organizations need automated password rotation to protect privileged accounts from becoming compromised by weak or compromised passwords. Automated password rotation enhances an organization’s security, reduces unauthorized access and improves efficiency.

Continue reading to learn more about password rotation, the challenges of manual password rotation and the benefits of automated password rotation.

What Is Password Rotation?

Password rotation is the cybersecurity practice of regularly changing a password every 30, 60 or 90 days to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information. It is primarily used in Privileged Access Management (PAM) to protect privileged accounts from becoming compromised. PAM refers to securing and managing accounts with the privileges to access an organization’s highly-sensitive data and systems.

Password rotation ensures that privileged accounts have a limited lifespan and unauthorized users cannot gain access to an organization’s sensitive data. It protects all types of privileged accounts such as local administrator accounts, privileged user accounts and non-human service accounts. With a PAM solution, organizations can automatically rotate passwords and determine the frequency of the rotation based on the password age, usage and security importance.

Challenges of Manual Password Rotation

Some organizations will manually rotate passwords for privileged accounts which poses a huge security risk. With so many privileged accounts for an organization to manage, changing passwords manually can result in weak credentials, improper storage and wasted time. Here are the challenges of manually rotating passwords.

Weak passwords

If an organization is manually rotating passwords, they often resort to using weak passwords that put the organization at risk. Since the organization has to come up with new passwords themselves, they will reuse variations of previous passwords or create passwords that are easy to remember but very predictable for cybercriminals to guess. Using weak passwords can lead to a data breach and unauthorized access to an organization’s network.

Insecure password storage

When an organization manually rotates passwords, they often leave their passwords in insecure storage locations such as on an Excel spreadsheet or sticky note. Manually updating passwords and storing them using these methods is unorganized and leads to users forgetting their passwords. Storing passwords on Excel spreadsheets is also insecure because they are unencrypted and can be easily stolen by cybercriminals.

Waste of time

Organizations who manually rotate passwords end up wasting time changing passwords, informing employees about the password change or forgetting the passwords after changing them. Administrators who change the passwords waste time coming up with the passwords themselves. It can be difficult to come up with strong and unique passwords for every privileged account for each rotation. Administrators also have to inform every user who uses the privileged account about the password change. If users forget the password, they have to request a ticket with their organization’s Help Desk to reset the password.

Benefits of Automated Password Rotation

To avoid the challenges of manual password rotation, organizations should use automated password rotation. Automated password rotation is a feature of PAM solutions that will automatically generate strong passwords for your privileged accounts on a predetermined schedule or on-demand, and replace the existing ones. Here are the benefits of using automated password rotation. 

Enhances security

Organizations can use automated password rotation from a PAM solution to enhance their security. A PAM solution allows organizations to have full visibility into their entire data environment. Organizations can see who is accessing privileged accounts and the password security of these accounts. With the automated password rotation feature, organizations can ensure privileged accounts are secure by automatically rotating passwords with strong and unique passwords for every privileged account. By protecting privileged accounts, organizations protect their sensitive data from breaches and unauthorized access.

Reduces risk of unauthorized access

Automated password rotation can reduce the risk of unauthorized access. Since automated password rotation routinely generates strong and unique passwords for each privileged account, it makes it difficult for cybercriminals to guess the login credentials of privileged accounts and gain unauthorized access. It also limits the lifespan of these passwords which helps prevent insider threats from misusing privileged accounts. If a privileged account’s login credentials were compromised, a PAM solution would notify you and allow you to automatically rotate the password immediately.

Improves efficiency

Since password rotation is automated, it allows organizations to improve their efficiency and avoid wasting time on resetting passwords. Organizations can use a PAM solution to easily rotate passwords whenever they want. They won’t have to worry about creating strong and unique passwords themselves because a PAM solution will do it for them. A PAM solution also makes it easier for organizations to share new passwords with users through secure, encrypted password sharing. Users will not have to worry about forgetting passwords since they can access their passwords in their password vault.

How Keeper® Simplifies Password Rotation

Organizations need to implement password rotation to protect privileged accounts. However, they should avoid manually rotating passwords since it can be a security risk. Organizations should use automated password rotation to enhance their security and prevent unauthorized access. The best way to implement automated password rotation and protect privileged accounts is by using a PAM solution. A PAM solution includes a password manager that can automatically rotate passwords, creating strong and unique passwords for privileged accounts, and securely storing them in a digital vault. 

KeeperPAM™ is a zero-trust and zero-knowledge privileged access management solution that combines Keeper Enterprise Password Manager (EPM), Keeper Secrets Manager® (KSM) and Keeper Connection Manager® (KCM). With KeeperPAM, organizations can manage the login credentials of privileged accounts, secrets and remote access all in one place. It simplifies password rotation by automatically rotating passwords at a predetermined schedule or on demand. It allows organizations to safely share records and notify users of password changes. 

Request a demo of KeeperPAM to automatically rotate passwords for privileged accounts.