EduTech – is it time for password management in education?

One of the biggest challenges that educational organizations face today is information security – this sector is responsible for protecting vast amounts of sensitive and confidential information.

It comes as no surprise that in the past years academic institutions have been a growing target for cyber crimes. This is due to general increase in data breaches, as well as the fact that these organizations are responsible for storing and handling private data about current and past students, staff, academic researches and other documentation.

When it comes to data breaches, one of the key causes for them is weak and careless password management in education and other organizations. In fact, recent reports show that 80% of data breaches are caused by compromised passwords.

Hard facts about password management

70-80 passwords per user on average in 2020
61% of users reuse the same passwords on multiple sites
$3.86 million is the average cost of a data breach in damages. The cost of a data breach for an educational institution can be tenfold or even hundredfold.

How Covid-19 changed cybersecurity and data protection

88% of companies required or encouraged work from home
32% increased demand for collaborative tools
80% of companies experienced increase in cyber attacks

The challenge

Passwords today are still the main line of defence against adversaries for sensitive information. But it’s also one of the most overlooked aspects in information security.

It’s not easy to create secure and unique passwords for every account in the organization. It’s even more difficult to store the sensitive credentials and manage access to them securely, especially when these credentials have to be used by the staff daily and updated regularly.

Luckily, there are ways to solve this problem and enjoy the convenience in the process.

Password management in education

Password manager is an application that helps you generate secure passwords, store credentials in a secure environment and use them efficiently in your daily work.

It works by securely encrypting and storing all the data that you store with end-to-end encryption. PassCamp uses AES-256, and zero-knowledge proof to ensure that your data is secure and can’t be accessed by anyone, not even PassCamp staff. Learn more.

Here’s a quick overview of how password management makes your life easier:

Only need to remember one password.
Don’t need to think of new passwords – new unique and secure passwords are generated for you.
Don’t need to think where to store your credentials – all passwords are stored in your secure password vault, that can be accessed on your desktop or mobile device, wherever you are.
You no longer need to type or paste passwords into fields online – all logins are automatically saved in your web vault and most importantly – automatically filled in for you.
Password sharing can be actually secure. An efficient password management tool helps you to organize and securely distribute passwords within your team and organization effortlessly. You will still keep track and keep control over who has access to your credentials.

Change in information security regulations

Regulations related to information security are changing the landscape of organizations and companies from all sectors.

A couple of notable examples are the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR) regulations.

Both of them are focused on protecting the privacy and security of personal and confidential information. And both of them have mechanisms that strongly encourage the protectors of the information to comply. The alternative (such as GDPR’s fine framework, reaching up to 20 million euros) can be costly.

The ongoing change in information security is bringing a lot of new policies across the board. Even though some of them remain recommendations today, it is wise to assume that some or most of them will become a requirement pretty soon.

Proactive approach today can save millions in fines and a lot of headaches in the upcoming years. Now is the perfect time to start solving issues related to cyber security in education organizations.

After all, finding the right solutions to fit an organization’s needs is going to take time. Same with actually implementing these solutions in real world scenarios, rolling out new policies, working out the flaws and training the staff.

Why choose PassCamp?

It’s the easiest to use and most user friendly password manager on the market today, created using the best UX/UI practises. A large part of users of password management in education are either older than average or younger than average user. Implementing a new system that is easily understood and operated is a must – research shows that both older and younger users don’t have much tolerance for difficult to use tools.

This means that implementing a solution that’s easy to use can save a lot of training and support effort, translating directly into man hours and money saved. And all this while making the life of internal users much easier.

While it may take days or even weeks to onboard more complicated tools, user testimonies show that it only takes hours or even minutes to get a hang of how to use PassCamp.

Password management adapted to your organization

It means that we understand that each organization has its own challenges to solve when it comes to password management. That’s why our biggest strength is flexibility. It helps us to ensure you get the solution your organization needs and finds easy to use: