More secure password communication

Question

Our vendor needs some access to our test server, and thus we send them email with username/password (i think it's unencrypted). What is the most unintrusive way to bump up the security level?

Thanks

Answer 1

Call them on the telephone.

Answer 2

Send the two parts with separate communication channels.

Use a combination of any two of the following.

• Voice phone call.

• Fax.

• Snail Mail.

• Encrypted Email.

Separate channels makes it very hard to reconstruct the credentials.