How To Securely Share Information & Passwords With Your Virtual Assistant
When working with a virtual assistant a large concern is security. A typical thought that comes to mind is “I don’t know this person; I don’t want to just hand over my passwords and personal information that easily”. We’re with you on that part, but there are ways to combat these concerns.
NDAs
First and foremost make sure that you have a legally binding contract between you and the assistant that is receiving any personal information. If you’re utilizing a Byron assistant you’re already covered. You’re covered through us because when you sign up you are executing a legal agreement between Byron and your company. On top of that, we execute NDAs and agreements with all of our assistants to close the confidentiality loop.
If you are not utilizing a Byron assistant, and you are going the route of using your own virtual assistant, you have to have a lawyer draft up an NDA and have your assistant sign it. This way if any information is leaked you have legal cause to get reparations.
Adding Your Assistant As An Authorized User
Most cloud based (SaaS) applications these days have an “Add User” feature built into the system. Customers typically forget about this. For example, applications like MailChimp, Trello, Asana and ZenDesk all have the ability to add passwords. For other tools, it’s typically a 50/50 shot if you have to pay for the extra user/seat or not. If you don’t want to pay for that extra seat, read on!
A Quick Phone Call
The quickest and easiest way to share passwords from our experience is to quickly call your assistant and share all of the passwords that your assistant might need. If you train your assistant through a training kickoff call we suggest that you provide the passwords at that time. The assistant will write the password on a piece of paper so that it’s not digital stored anywhere in case of hacks/breaches.
Cloud Sharing Documents
We have two words for you… Google Docs. A high number of administrative tasks are performed within Word, Excel, or PowerPoint. No need to share passwords here, for any document or folder that you have working files in simply grab a public sharable link from the Google document and share it with your virtual assistant.
Utilizing Third Party Password Sharing Tools
In our experience, utilizing password sharing tools takes a lot of up front setup, but once it’s in place it works well. The idea around password sharing tools is that all of your passwords are encrypted so that the assistant can log into your accounts (with your permission) and he/she will never actually know your password. The two most popular password sharing tools on the market are:
LastPass is a free tool so a number of our clients prefer to use this one. The process to get this set up with your virtual assistant is as follows:
Instruct your assistant to sign up for a LastPass account
You also sign up for a LastPass account
Sync your web-based applications to LastPass (ex. Gmail, InfusionSoft, Kickstarter, etc…)
Retrieve your assistant’s LastPass email address/username
Share each synced account with your assistant through LastPass
After that, you’re all set! After you share your synced accounts, the assistant will be able to just click a button and will be able to log into the applications of your choosing without actually knowing the password. Pretty cool!
