Password protection when it matters most

When IT solutions provider MOQdigital needed an enterprise password management solution, LastPass ticked all the boxes.

Founded in 2005 and with 350 staff across offices in Brisbane, Sydney and Sri Lanka, solutions provider MOQdigital is a Microsoft and Citrix Gold Partner and Cisco Premier Certified Partner that helps businesses transform to the digital world. Its client activities range from server migrations to on-premise and cloud-based solutions, business integration, consulting, implementation and managed services.

As an end-to-end service provider, maintaining the security and sovereignty of MOQdigital clients’ data is paramount. “Password security is a big concern of ours, as being a managed services provider, we have requirements to keep credentials for clients and their systems, so we needed a secure repository to do that,” said the company’s IT Operations Manager, Jason Muir.

To that end, MOQdigital began the search for an enterprise password management solution, and settled on LogMeIn’s LastPass.

Solution

Members of the MOQdigital team had used LastPass individually prior to the company selecting LastPass Enterprise, so Muir said they were already aware of some of its capabilities and benefits.

“We were using the personal version of LastPass and now we’ve moved on to the complete enterprise solution to cover all our password management requirements,” he said.

When seeking out an enterprise password management solution, MOQdigital was looking for two main benefits: improved security of credentials and increased productivity. LastPass remembers all of the passwords that staff need so there are fewer password resets, and — with the capability of LastPass Admin console — when employees leave the company, it is easy to remove their permissions so they can no longer access any company or client systems.

“The staff love it, and from my perspective, it gives me a level of comfort knowing that people aren’t storing passwords on little bits of paper or within their own personal repositories,” said Jason.

Results

LastPass has delivered a range of benefits to MOQdigital that have enhanced security and improved workflows.

“Password sharing has been a big bonus for us in terms of business continuity,” said Muir. “Now, when we start a project, a password folder for that client is created and populated with credentials for the various systems.

“When it then comes time to transition it to our Managed Service team, we then can easily transfer the access rights, so that only the relevant group of engineers have the necessary access.

“This level of security compartmentalisation allows us to provide a level of comfort to our clients knowing that we treat access to their systems in this way.”

LastPass has also helped MOQdigital maintain the security of its systems when it brings in outside contractors to assist with projects on a temporary basis. Being able to control the visibility of the credentials required for access is a key benefit for the company.

“We can control it right down to a single account and a single password for a single system, or indeed scale it right up to an entire site if needed,” said Muir. “Being able to control that at a granular level is really critical for us because all staff only receive the amount of access they require.”

MOQdigital also utilises the Secure Notes feature within LastPass to great effect. “In addition to using LastPass for passwords, we’ve been able to record some security information that we don’t want to hold in other knowledge-based systems, and we can actually store it alongside the specific systems credentials so that all the relevant info is in the one place,” said Muir.

Another significant benefit of LastPass Enterprise is its reporting capabilities, which enables MOQdigital to determine who accessed which systems and when, and generate reports on the findings, ensuring that enterprises can identify whether everyone who has used the system has the appropriate level of access.

“Some of our clients have data sovereignty requirements and need to ensure that all data remains within Australia,” said Muir. “LastPass built their tenancy within Australia allowing us to ensure we were compliant and maintain our current contracts.

“This shows a real level of agility and commitment by LastPass to their clients that we recognise and highly value.”

Overall, Muir sees LastPass as integral to security and productivity at MOQdigital.

“We have an ISO27001 information security certification and we are currently going through another auditing process,” he said. “Password security is a question that always comes up, so with LastPass, that’s a big tick in that box and we move on.

“Essentially, it is our product of choice for password management and I can’t see another solution out there that comes close.”

Image credit: ©stock.adobe.com/au/titima157