It happens every day in thousands of offices: "Hey, can you ping me the database password?"

And seconds later, a reply in Slack or Microsoft Teams: "Sure, it's Sup3rS3cr3t!2024".

It seems harmless. After all, Slack and Teams are secure, enterprise-grade tools, right? They require login, 2FA, and use HTTPS. What could go wrong?

The reality is that while these tools are excellent for communication, they are terrible places to store secrets. When you paste a password into a chat, you are creating a permanent security vulnerability.

The Problem of Eternal Logs

The main reason password sharing on Slack risks your security is persistence.

Corporate chat tools are designed to keep history. They want you to be able to search for that file from three months ago. But this feature is a bug for security.

  • Indexable History: Slack indexes every word. If a hacker gains access to a single employee's account (via phishing or session hijacking), the first thing they will do is search for keywords like "password", "key", "secret", "login", or "admin".
  • The "Goldmine" Effect: A chat history isn't just a conversation; it's a repository of every secret your team has ever shared. Years of credentials, often still valid, waiting to be found.

The Insider Threat and Compliance

It's not just about external hackers.

  • Global Admins: In many organizations, administrators have access to export entire chat logs for legal or compliance reasons (eDiscovery). That means your "private" DM with a password might be readable by IT staff or legal teams.
  • Notification Previews: Passwords sent in chat often pop up on lock screens (mobile push notifications). Anyone walking by a desk could snap a photo.

The Solution: Ephemeral Communication

To follow Teams security best practices, you need to separate communication from secret transmission.

Use Slack to say "Here is the credential". Use Nurbak to deliver the credential.

The Secure Workflow

Instead of pasting the password directly:

  1. Generate: Paste the password into Nurbak.
  2. Configure: Set it to self-destruct after 1 view.
  3. Share: Paste the Nurbak link into Slack/Teams.

The Result:

  • Your colleague clicks the link and gets the password.
  • The link is destroyed immediately.
  • The message in Slack remains ("Here is the link..."), but the link leads nowhere (404 Not Found).
  • If a hacker searches the logs a month later, they find a graveyard of dead links, not a list of live passwords.

Conclusion

Stop treating your chat logs like a password manager. They are not encrypted vaults; they are searchable text files hosted on someone else's server.

Adopt secure communication channels for secrets. Use ephemeral links and keep your history clean. And remember to use Client-Side Encryption.