Inventory Hive is one of the UK’s leading property inspection and virtual tour software platforms. With the help of Bitwarden, Inventory Hive enhanced its password security.
Founded: 2015
Industry: Property Management Software
Location: Lichfield, United Kingdom
Inventory Hive is one of the UK’s leading property inspection and virtual tour software platforms. Their property inventory software makes it easy to create, manage, and store property inventories and tenant reports on any device.
As a fast-growing startup, Inventory Hive didn’t have a password management system set up when they first launched. Both their staff and tech stack were small, and they only used a limited number of platforms and logins.
But the company grew quickly, and they soon realized they needed to set up password security practices that were safe and easy to use. As a cloud-based company with their sights set on long-term partnerships with large, mature businesses, they needed to be proactive and set up airtight password security early on.
“We wanted to make sure we could manage our passwords more effectively as the company grew,” marketing manager Mitch Handley explains. “It was a case of nipping any potential problems in the bud by getting into a good practice early on to make sure our company stayed secure.”
"You must use Bitwarden."
Inventory Hive quickly selected Bitwarden for its user-friendly interface, scalable pricing, and most of all, world-class security features.
Because Inventory Hive made Bitwarden part of their infrastructure early on, they have been able to build their security practices around the solution.
“Our policies on password management are built around the Bitwarden software,” Mitch explains. “In our password policy, the first sentence says, ‘you must use Bitwarden.’ It’s the foundation that we’ve built the rest of the company’s security policies on.”
User-friendly interface
Cross-platform access
Strong password generator
ISO 27001 certification
Secure password sharing with collections
Flexible pricing model
These characteristics were some of the reasons why Inventory Hive chose Bitwarden for their password management.
As part of their ongoing efforts to protect client and partner data, Inventory Hive became ISO 27001 certified in 2021.
The Bitwarden password manager helped Inventory Hive set up a secure password policy, which was a critical requirement for receiving their certification.
“We underwent a rigorous assessment of our information security management processes, including an audit of our policies, our practices, and our procedures,” Mitch says. “Bitwarden played a big part in ensuring that we followed all of the required procedures and were able to get certified.”
For Mitch, one of the most valuable tools on the platform is Bitwarden Send, which makes it easy for Inventory Hive to securely share sensitive marketing data and spreadsheets with his colleagues, without worrying about breaches or human error. Bitwarden Send enables users to easily transmit fully encrypted files and text to and from any device, which the receiver can open with a separate secure password.
“It’s easy to get into bad habits and send secure spreadsheets or data over email, where it might get hacked, or you might even send that file to the wrong email address,” Mitch says. “Having end-to-end encryption with Bitwarden Send gives us that extra layer of protection. If someone does send a file incorrectly, it’s still password-protected.”
Bitwarden access management enables users to share passwords easily without compromising security, which has been especially useful when urgent matters have come up and employees are ill or on vacation.
“When our support team was out on sick leave, I needed to log into our platform to manage all of the support tickets that came in,” Mitch says. “Obviously, I don’t have their login. But because they shared it on the secure Bitwarden Inventory Hive team, I could find their login and go manage those tickets.”
Today, Inventory Hive uses Bitwarden to secure all company passwords. “It’s quite a lot for the size of our company,” he says. “I don’t think people realize how many different platforms they’ll log into in a day. When you multiply that across all of our staff members, it shows you how much we rely on Bitwarden for our password protection.”
With the Bitwarden password manager and ISO certification in place, Inventory Hive has built a strong security foundation, strengthened customer trust, and demonstrated to potential partners that they take security seriously. As a UK company whose partners often have extra concerns about GDPR compliance, this has proven to be particularly valuable.
“One of the first questions customers ask us now is about our security policies,” Mitch says. “Being ISO certified instills confidence in them. They know their data will be safe with us.”
And best of all? Having this enhanced security in place has made it possible for Inventory Hive to land those partnerships with the large, mature companies that they were after.
“We’ve got quite a few large blue-chip companies that we’re currently onboarding or about to start onboarding. And it’s all down to our security policies and our certification. We would never have gotten these customers on board without Bitwarden.”
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