Bitwarden Channel Partner of the Quarter: Convergence Networks

Founded: 2000

Industry: IT Services

Location: Northern US and Canada

Based in the Northern US and Canada, Convergence Networks is a managed service provider (MSP) supporting small business clients across a wide range of industries, including financial services, healthcare, manufacturing and engineering. Its service offerings include cybersecurity solution suites that address IT security readiness, deliver network penetration testing, provide dark web monitoring and enable a well-rounded strategy for combating data security threats.

Part of the Convergence Networks customer cybersecurity portfolio includes providing a password manager that can protect sensitive data. The company became concerned about the password management solution it had offered for a number of years because it had experienced several breaches in a short period of time. “As the person in charge of security, I was increasingly uncomfortable with the password security status quo and was interested in seeking out alternatives,” said John Stephens, chief information security officer (CISO) at Convergence Networks. The team researched alternatives but found a number of password management solutions lacking in their ability to support a diverse range of endpoints and more complex use cases.

Having previously had a positive experience with Bitwarden in an earlier role, Convergence Networks IT Manager Josh Plumlee suggested that the IT security team consider replacing its current offering. The benefits were immediately apparent. “When we really started looking at it, Bitwarden did everything the other solution did, but it was easier, more secure and more economical,” said Stephens. “Quite frankly, it was a no-brainer to move to Bitwarden. We were able to deploy it internally to our entire organisation and improve the security suite offered to our clients as well.”

Stephens cited the ability to share passwords as a major Bitwarden selling point, a capability he found lacking in other password managers. He also noted the ease and speed with which the solution could be deployed internally and across its client base. This was affirmed by Plumlee, who noted that even the subset of users who had never used a password manager before or had saved passwords in Excel spreadsheets found the process straightforward due to the Bitwarden integration with SSO solutions. Plumlee also had effusive words for the Bitwarden customer support team, stating that the Convergence Networks team felt “very well looked after” and was able to get results promptly.

“The Bitwarden event logs were really important to us,” said Plumlee. “For example, we use Microsoft Azure AD for various departments. Within those departments, employees share passwords. In a few instances, we had an employee update a password within our previous password management database but not actually update it in the platform. With Bitwarden, we could determine who changed a record and recover accounts without having to go through the platform’s recovery process.”

The Bitwarden event logs are time-stamped records of events that occur within a Bitwarden Teams or Enterprise organisation. The event logs capture more than 60 different events, including password changes, login attempts and administrative actions. Events are captured at both the Bitwarden client and server, with most events occurring at the client. Overall, Plumlee praised the event logs as an important way of ensuring accountability and delineating privileged access.

“The Microsoft integration with our previous password manager was pretty lacklustre,” said Plumlee. “We’ve saved a very substantial amount of time since rolling out Bitwarden because we can do everything through our Microsoft tenant. We very rarely have to go into the Bitwarden platform to change something because we’ve been given the tools to build out through the Bitwarden integrations.”

Internally, the Convergence Networks team has also seen a 238% rise in the number of employees using Bitwarden and a near 100% adoption rate across the organisation. Externally, the company estimates it takes around 4 hours to deploy Bitwarden to clients — a dramatic improvement on the average deployment time it saw with its former password manager.

“Bitwarden is a reliable, reputable solution without a history of security vulnerabilities. Its ease of administration and deployment, and its economic attractiveness, make it the ideal password manager to offer to our clients,” said Stephens.

“It’s very useful to have confidence in a platform through our own internal experiences because we can wholeheartedly recommend it to our customers,” said Plumlee.

Interested in becoming a member of the Bitwarden partner programme? Find out more here. You can also learn more about what Bitwarden can do for your business and sign up for a free 7-day trial!