We generally advise against making a private mailbox and sharing the credentials in order to give multiple people access. It’s not a good idea for a number of reasons – first and foremost that one person can simply lock everyone else out of that mailbox if they so desire, for any reason, at any time, by just changing the password. A close second is that the more people need that password, the more likely it is that one of them is going to do something a little silly like write it onto a sticky note and leave it on their screen, meaning breaches also become more likely.
A mailbox meant for a single person will be lacking some of the tools a group might need, it will doubtlessly be sending at a higher volume than a single-person mailbox, and it will be tougher to back up. Microsoft and Google accounts both come with storage solutions tied to addresses (OneDrive for Microsoft, and things like Google Photos for Google) which makes the risk of accidentally saving something sensitive to a box many people can access a lot higher. Sending something from the wrong address is also an increased risk to people who have to log in and out of individual mailboxes repeatedly in a day as part of their job.
Instead, a shared mailbox is basically a perfect solution – and it doesn’t require a license! In Microsoft, as long as you already have a tenant, a shared mailbox is free to create. It doesn’t require a log-in, and in fact cannot be logged into. In order to access the mailbox, a person must be manually added to it by an admin, meaning ordinary members of the box can’t mistakenly share credentials with someone that wasn’t supposed to have access. Forwarding emails from a shared mailbox is still a possibility, yes, but it doesn’t compromise the entire box, and it’s a smaller kind of mistake.
Already made a mailbox? Don’t worry, individual user mailboxes can be converted to shared mailboxes after the fact, and access can be given to team members who might need the data inside.
In short – don’t share credentials. Make a shared mailbox instead!
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