Machado, veteran-owned IT consulting firm
Overview
Founded: 2001
Company size: 30+ employees
Industry: IT consulting and services
Location: Massachusetts
Length of time using Bitwarden: 2 years
Number of clients: 105
Number of Bitwarden seats managed: 400
Machado, a Massachusetts-based, veteran-owned IT consulting firm, offers bundled IT and cyber security services to business customers across various industries. While the company sells an array of IT security services, its password management offering was limited. Customers were following poor password management practices that could have led to data breaches, so the Machado team knew it was time to provide stronger password security solutions.
Situation: Concern about insecure password storage prompted search for enterprise password manager
Over the years, Machado had noted customers storing their passwords insecurely. As high-profile data breaches continued to mount, password security became increasingly front of mind for customers concerned about their own legal, financial and reputational risks.
“Between ransomware attacks and business email compromises, securing credentials is of utmost importance,” said Max Kaplan, director of engineering at Machado. “If you aren’t securing your credentials, what are you doing?”
Despite the inherent risks, the Machado team found that a number of customers were still storing their passwords in Excel spreadsheets. “While customers recognised and acknowledged the risks of doing this, they also weren’t sure where to start in terms of correcting course,” said Kaplan. “Some customers defaulted to storing their passwords within browser-based password managers. But not only does this not extend to applications that aren’t websites, it also doesn’t enable organisational oversight or any sense of containment. Those passwords are just in a browser.”
Machado considered a few options as it evaluated the best password management solution for its customers. “We knew we wanted a solution that was easy to use, since technological comfort levels and abilities tend to vary. Having some measure of provider management was important, as we didn’t want to deal with having a hundred separate accounts that require separate credentials,” said Kaplan
The Machado team also sought a password management provider that was transparent about its product roadmap and technical architecture and, of course, friendly to managed services providers (MSPs) like Machado. “A lot of the enterprise-focused password management companies seem very closed off. They’re a bit inflexible, not open about their product direction and not open about their code,” said Kaplan.
Solution: Bitwarden, easy to use and accessible for customers
While Machado briefly considered other password manager solutions to sell to customers, Kaplan’s own positive personal experience with Bitwarden and the software’s overall reputation helped propel Bitwarden to the front of the line.
“I already had experience with Bitwarden and was really impressed with its overall capabilities,” said Kaplan. “Some employees were familiar with LastPass, but when we did a feature-by-feature comparison of the two businesses, we quickly realised Bitwarden was the company we wanted to work with. LastPass just isn’t as MSP-focused.”
Kaplan said, “As our customers can attest, Bitwarden is easy to use and easy to adopt.”
Kaplan cites that there are “many different ways to use Bitwarden, such as through the desktop, mobile application and web extensions” as a major selling point. He praises the centralised nature of the product, password-sharing capabilities and secure password generation as important factors that have helped customers instil a strong password security culture.
Collaborative partnership with Bitwarden and seamless customer deployment
Kaplan is particularly appreciative of how laser-focused the Bitwarden team is on ensuring its partners have what they need to best serve their customers. “When we first came on board, the Bitwarden partner programme was in its early stages,” said Kaplan. “And yet, immediately, we saw the level of work, dedication and resources Bitwarden was putting into partner success.”
Machado has also found the Bitwarden deployment process, in Kaplan’s words, ‘extremely easy.’
Kaplan said, “We’re able to get things set up very quickly. We offer SSO (single sign-on) and system for cross-domain identity management (SCIM) provisioning with every single customer we set up. Between that and the time it takes to get the users provisioned in the environment, the desktop clients deployed and the web extensions deployed, we’re talking just a couple of hours. It’s pretty amazing.”
Bitwarden: “A solution we can stand behind”
“In the past, we didn’t have a solution we could wholeheartedly stand behind,” said Kaplan. “Usually, we would end up directing customers towards whatever solution was big at the time. But we didn’t support it. It was just a recommendation. Now we have a solution we stand behind, wholeheartedly support and believe in. Bitwarden is something we can easily recommend, resell and provide to our clients.”
“The product itself is fantastic. What more can you ask for?”
Get started with Bitwarden
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.