A Guide to Enterprise Password Management Throughout the Employee Lifecycle

New types of security challenges, or exploits to mitigate, arise every day, leading to a constantly evolving information technology (IT) stack. Fortunately, select security tools can easily integrate into your company’s existing stack while improving employee productivity and security.

When adding new tools to your roster, consider how you will manage access throughout the employee lifecycle. For example, a new employee should gain access to specific systems from day one, and others may be introduced later. At the other end of the spectrum, access must be revoked immediately for a terminated employee.

Comprehensive password management enhances company and individual security and fosters collaboration and enhanced productivity. This guide illuminates how password management touches each stage of the employee lifecycle.

Password management touches nearly every single part of your business and is most significant during three major stages of an employee’s lifecycle.

• Onboarding

• Succession and Promotion

• Offboarding

Onboarding New Employees

From granting access to corporate and departmental systems, setting new employee milestones, or scheduling training, effective onboarding takes time and attention. Onboarding new employees efficiently speeds integration and helps the business deliver faster results.

In larger companies, human resources and IT teams might grant access to enterprise-wide systems, including options for Single Sign On (SSO) to select services. However, the universe of employee credentials often goes far beyond those within such systems. Also, mid-size companies may not have implemented an SSO system and have an even greater need for employees to get started with the proper digital security practices.

From the new employee’s perspective, accessing and setting up the necessary software or applications without the right tools can cause friction and confusion, leading to poor practices. In the absence of a secure process, such as a password manager, sharing log-in credentials with new employees is often managed using at-risk methods, such as email or messaging apps.

The pressure to be successful at work, both for the individual and the team, often means co-workers are going to share necessary log-in information with one another; it's just a matter of whether or not they are enabled to do so safely.

A recent survey of IT decision-makers revealed nearly 60% of teams would share company passwords to colleagues through unsecure methods, despite the risk. And 80% of IT decision-makers want to mandate the use of an enterprise-wide password manager, with practicality being a major reason. Another critical factor is a password manager emphasizes data security as better password practices reduce risky behavior.

Introducing a password manager early in the onboarding process drives adoption and minimizes the friction of accessing new systems.

Succession and Promotion

Scaling your business also demands flexible technology for growth—including password management. Expansion might include increasing team sizes, creating new roles or departments, or acquisitions.

Sometimes existing employees will move into new roles, which might require a transition in software ownership or updating user access levels. With a password management system in place, moving transitioning employees into new groups with new shared folders or updating role access could just take a few clicks.

For one law firm, RMWBH, Attorneys and Counselors at Law, this often happens when managing a large caseload across attorneys and paralegals.

If one paralegal is working on a case with a huge trial date coming up, they can pass it off to the next paralegal without bothering the original user. Managing over 10,000 passwords is automated across a series of shared folders that enable automatic distribution, taking the process time down from days to just hours

Offboarding Employees

When employees leave a company on their terms or through termination, the offboarding process includes concluding or transitioning projects and turning off system access.For some companies without a password management system, someone might change the passwords to all shared log-ins upon an employee’s last day. Maybe this includes updating a spreadsheet of log-in credentials and sharing with other team members needing access. This can be compromising as unencrypted spreadsheets and shared documents lack the security and fine-grained access control to manage passwords.Companies want to maintain institutional knowledge in the event of an employee transition. Italian digital transformation company, Intesys, found themselves in search of a centralized solution. “We needed a centralized solution to manage provision and deprovision user access to credentials,” Mirko Spezie, company senior system specialist, said. By leveraging shared folders called “collections” in their password management system, the Intesys team could easily and securely reassign access to the appropriate team members.

Beyond these password management examples at each stage of the employee lifecycle, it’s important to note that not all password management systems are the same.

The most useful password managers fit seamlessly with companies' existing Identity and Access Management strategies, as well as their existing Identity Providers.

Identity and Access Management (IAM)

According to CSOonline.com, IAM provides “...IT managers with tools and technologies for controlling user access to critical information within an organization.” Typically, IAM describes access path levels to enterprise-wide tools and systems. Password management software is a foundational piece of an overall IAM approach, enabling team members to store and share log-in credentials.

Password management incorporates self-service enablement for security and collaboration, specifically for log-in credentials and sensitive information. For example, users could retain specific website subscriptions or hold credit card information or secure notes documenting procedures for particular credentials. Empowering employees to own their individual security fortifies the company’s overall security stance.

Identity Providers (IdPs)

Identity providers (IdP) further complement password managers. Identity providers maintain centralized employee credentials, often combined with two-factor authentication, most commonly in the form of Single Sign On (SSO). Using this approach, enterprise-wide tools and systems simplify the log-in process for employees through the IdP.

With a goal to integrate with existing solutions, password managers using a company's existing Identity Provider provide a fast path to success. Password managers empower employees to manage and share credentials securely, including those that might be unique to individual employees or teams.