Updated on November 28, 2023.
To perform a password audit, all you’ll need is a password management solution that will assist you in auditing your passwords. A password management solution is a tool that aids both individuals and businesses in creating strong passwords and securely storing them in a password vault. Because password management solutions help users manage their passwords, they also make auditing them a lot easier since you’ll know when a password is being reused or if a password you’re using is considered weak.
Continue reading to learn more about how to audit passwords and why it’s important to do so.
What Is Password Auditing?
A password audit is the process of checking the strength of passwords. Typically, organizations use hacking software to test the strength of their network against dictionary attacks, brute force attacks and other password-cracking attacks. A password audit aims to measure the strength of an organization’s password security by checking the length of passwords, the use of common dictionary words and more.
The use of weak passwords indicates that organizations are at a higher risk of being compromised by an unauthorized user.
The Importance of Auditing Passwords
Auditing passwords is important because it can help identify weak passwords and improve the overall password security of an organization.
Identifies weak passwords
A password audit will let you know which passwords are most vulnerable to being compromised by identifying passwords that are weak. Weak passwords are passwords that don’t follow password best practices, meaning they are less than 16 characters long and don’t use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers and special characters. Reused passwords, and passwords that contain dictionary words and phrases, are also considered weak because they’re more vulnerable to being cracked.
Because password audits help identify weak passwords, they prompt you to take action by changing them immediately – eliminating weak passwords before cybercriminals are able to compromise them.
Improves password security
After identifying the most at-risk passwords by performing a password audit, your organization will have a better understanding of employee password practices. This will give your organization a better idea of the password policies that need to be enforced to improve employee password security.
How To Perform a Password Audit Using a Password Manager
Using a password manager like Keeper® is the simplest way to perform a password audit for individuals and organizations. Keeper has an auditing tool called Security Audit that is integrated into its password management solution. This Security Audit feature can be accessed in your password vault from any of your devices.
When you click on the Security Audit feature, you’ll be taken to a screen that looks like the one in the image above. Here you’ll see an overall security score of all of the passwords stored in your vault. Next to it, you’ll see a list of the records stored in your vault along with the password strength for each. There are three types of strengths for passwords: Strong, medium and weak.
- Strong: If the password strength for a record is strong, the password being used is strong and can’t be easily cracked. You’ll want to ensure that each of your passwords shows this strength.
- Medium: If the password strength for a record is medium, the password being used isn’t exactly weak or strong. If you see a record marked as medium strength, we recommend updating your password to one that is strong.
- Weak: If the password strength for a record is weak, the password being used is high-risk and should be changed immediately to a password that is strong.
The Security Audit feature also lets you know if any of the passwords in your records are being reused for multiple accounts. If this is the case, you’ll need to update the password of each record so it’s unique.
Once you have a good idea of which passwords you need to update, you can change them immediately with the assistance of Keeper Password Manager. The easiest way to update your passwords quickly is by using Keeper’s browser extension which enables KeeperFill. When you update one of your passwords, KeeperFill will guide you throughout the process and even help you generate a new, strong password that can be saved to your vault immediately with the click of a button.
Use Keeper as Your Password Auditing Tool
Organizations no longer need to rely on third-party password auditors to audit their passwords for them. Password management solutions like Keeper make auditing passwords seamless for both individuals and organizations.
To see just how easy it is to use Keeper to audit your passwords, start a free 30-day personal trial or 14-day business trial today.
