Password Management Takes Flight at Travel Agency

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By Joe Siegrist

In today’s global economy, many companies find themselves with teams spread across different locations and time zones. For businesses with multiple teams of employees in various locations throughout the world, being able to quickly and securely address IT needs is a top priority.

Such is the case for leading online travel agency, FlightNetwork.com. Founded in 2005, FlightNetwork.com has grown to become the largest Canadian-owned online travel agency in Canada, and second most-visited behind Expedia. Globally positioned in three countries and five offices, FlightNetwork offers customers competitive prices and a convenient booking experience with discounted airfare, hotels, cruises, packages and rentals.

With a growing IT team working on a wide range of projects, FlightNetwork needed a way to efficiently manage the hundreds of logins that those projects inevitably require. Hundreds of passwords are required to facilitate admin access as employees work on technology integrations, coordinate with suppliers and organize a wide range of content for Web properties via APIs and custom logins. For security reasons, many passwords also need to change on a monthly or quarterly basis, introducing even more headaches for the IT team as they worked to ensure password protocol is followed while still providing employees with efficient access to the logins they need.

Challenges of Password Management

These challenges motivated FlightNetwork to seek out a password management solution, one that would allow for easy onboarding of employees and facilitate secure password sharing among teams. These needs led FlightNetwork to implement LastPass – a centralized, cost-effective corporate password manager that saves users’ passwords, and then logs in to all of their password-protected websites on their behalf, with secure access from every computer and mobile device.

After deploying LastPass Enterprise, FlightNetwork saw immediate gains in productivity and efficiency. With a password management system to centralize shared passwords and streamline employee onboarding, FlightNetwork reduced the amount of time needed to get new employees up-and-running and to connect employees to the tools that are critical to their performance.

Due to the large number of suppliers the team works with on a daily basis, FlightNetwork needed the ability to create and remove logins in real-time, and to quickly push out any changes to those logins. 

LastPass Enterprise addressed both of those critical requirements, automating both the employee onboarding and the password sharing processes. Now, a new login can be synced to the appropriate team members behind-the-scenes and with no extra work on their part. Plus, any updates to passwords are synced automatically, so everyone has the correct login data to the admin accounts they need.

Prior to using LastPass, FlightNetwork employed a three-pronged approach for keeping track of passwords: email, Excel spreadsheets, and Post-It notes. With LastPass Enterprise, the team has completely eliminated these insecure, unwieldy methods of data storage. All passwords are centrally organized within LastPass, and then synced across individuals as needed with Shared Folders. 

Now, when new employees join the FlightNetwork team, they can be instantly invited to the LastPass Enterprise system with their new email address. Each employee then has their own secure vault where only the passwords and notes that are relevant to their specific role are made available. Shared logins can then be deployed immediately by adding that employee to the necessary Shared Folders, and within minutes new employees are connecting to the accounts needed to complete their tasks.

Bryan Fernandez, Director of Product at FlightNetwork said, “One of the biggest challenges for our team at FlightNetwork is onboarding new employees. Giving out passwords to hundreds of sites is a daunting task. With LastPass, it makes it very easy to onboard people without having to manually send them passwords and have them stored in their email. Overall, the management and distribution of passwords across the organization is completely streamlined.”

FlightNetwork uses LastPass for more than just passwords. Teams also use Secure Notes to document system configurations and other access details. Rather than insecurely documenting that data in Excel, the team can now ensure that it’s securely encrypted and backed up for easy lookup whenever needed, and stored in a place that’s centrally available to the admins who need to manage that data.

By implementing LastPass Enterprise as their go-to password management solution, FlightNetwork has seen marked increase in efficiency and productivity across their technical teams. IT is able to facilitate projects and work with suppliers without being slowed down by passwords, while simultaneously improving security organization-wide. 

Additionally, LastPass saves the team time on a daily basis when it comes to repetitive tasks. Rather than having to think up new passwords when creating yet another supplier account login, the team can generate one with the LastPass password generator in one click. With one-click access to all accounts by letting LastPass login for them, employees waste no time looking up specific passwords or typing them in. Moreover, senior management have been able to eliminate more insecure methods of storing data, and ensure that company processes are protected by stronger passwords.

From growing businesses with a global presence, like FlightNetwork, to small startups, streamlining and sharing processes through a centralized corporate password manager can help companies do away with insecure data habits and improve productivity, leading to greater overall organizational security and business success.

Joe Siegrist is vice president and general manager of LastPass. 

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