When you fire an employee, you ask for the keys back. If for some reason they refuse, you hire a locksmith and change the locks. With computers, it isn’t that easy.
A recent story explains what happens when only one person has key passwords. The entire company was locked out and the employer was forced to negotiate a $200,000 deal to get the password back. Fortunately, in this case, Google was able to help out. That isn’t always the case.
It’s not just employees you have to worry about, but also computer repair services. For example, a computer service provider shut down an entire company for non-payment of a bill. That’s just harsh.
Regardless of whether you’re using someone in-house or a service provider, you need to keep passwords in more than one place. When we’re dealing with clients, we insist on it. We suggest password managers like 1Password or LastPass. If you switch computer repair companies and use another provider, we’re not going to lock you out!
If you ever need help managing your passwords, let us know. We help clients out all the time with stuff like this.
Photo by quinn.anya