IA-5(18): Password Managers
Control Family:
Parent Control:
Threats Addressed:
Baselines:
(Not part of any baseline)
Control is new to this version of the control set.
Control Statement
- Employ [Assignment: organization-defined password managers] to generate and manage passwords; and
- Protect the passwords using [Assignment: organization-defined controls].
Supplemental Guidance
For systems where static passwords are employed, it is often a challenge to ensure that the passwords are suitably complex and that the same passwords are not employed on multiple systems. A password manager is a solution to this problem as it automatically generates and stores strong and different passwords for various accounts. A potential risk of using password managers is that adversaries can target the collection of passwords generated by the password manager. Therefore, the collection of passwords requires protection including encrypting the passwords (see IA-5(1)(d)) and storing the collection offline in a token.