SPIE eliminates password insecurities and silos with Proton Pass
At a glance
Company Profile: SPIE
Industry: Information Technology | Multi-Technical Services | Energy | Infrastructure
Company size: 55,000
Problem: SPIE Switzerland needed to centralize password management, eliminating silos and risks while creating an easy-to-use experience for team members in its Swiss office.
Achievement: 95% of the team is now using Proton Pass, making day-to-day operations within Morning smoother, as team members can pick up where their colleagues left off with shared vaults.
Why Proton Pass was the right fit:
Centralized password and data management
Streamlined login processes for ease of use
Secure sharing to reduce risk
Across Europe, SPIE is the independent leader in transformational services in the energy and communications markets. The business is focused on helping clients adapt their operations to create sustainable growth, combating the impact of climate change. SPIE offers multi-technical services from energy-efficient renovations to deploying state-of-the-art technologies.
SPIE operates across Europe with more than 55,000 employees. Centralizing data and passwords is an exceptionally large and time-consuming operation. Looking to invest in a secure password management tool, SPIE has deployed Proton Pass for the 400 people in its Swiss office.
Creating centralized password storage
One of the main issues that SPIE looks to combat is the increase in attacks by hackers against the company. Eduardo Geraldi, CISO at SPIE, notes that the risks businesses face due to poor password management are growing:
"We closely monitor our entire infrastructure, our entire attack surface. And we're seeing an increase of credential attacks on our company and also on data or credentials that are published on the dark web. We knew that in theory managing passwords seems to be very, very easy, but in reality wasn't really applied."
SPIE originally chose KeePass as its business password manager, deploying it for all workers. However, Eduardo said mass adoption was an issue: "Our main tool was KeePass, because it was a free solution. But KeePass doesn't have good usability for web browsers. So many users had different integrated web browser passwords in Chrome, Edge, Firefox."
Employees were storing data in multiple locations with unknown security, creating risky silos. Data regulations also weren't necessarily being followed as passwords were being stored outside of the business environment. "We have people using Notepad, Excel, post-its and notes as a password manager, as well as unencrypted, non-compliant password managers," Eduardo said. "It was really messy and complicated for users to keep changing their passwords and to make them complex enough."
In the Swiss SPIE office, the company is centralizing its password management with Proton Pass: a single, easy-to-use tool. "We've really addressed those issues. We've made a big step forward in basic password management," Eduardo said.
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Simplifying the login process
With team members finding password management difficult, single sign-on (SSO) was a key draw for the SPIE team. Logging into multiple business accounts a day can create frustration and poor data practices. Proton Pass makes the login process seamless with a combination of user-friendly features including SSO, autofill, and a password generator to create secure new passwords when required.
"From a business point of view, the SSO integration and the SCIM provision were the key features," Eduardo said. SSO allows SPIE employees in the Swiss office to log in to all of their work tools with a single set of credentials, greatly reducing frustration. Remembering multiple, secure passwords is also not an issue with autofill. Eduardo speaks to this: "I think the autofill, of course, is also an important part:
“The user really sees that the tool is helping in filling out the passwords on different forms, and also when they change passwords, the password generator helps them automatically."
Biometric login is also a secure yet user-friendly option that's now available for the team. "For team members using Windows Hello, they can log in with their fingerprint or other biometric tokens on PC. So we have a good consolidation of ways to log in that will help us to roll Proton Pass out further while giving some value back to the user."
Thanks to these new features, Eduardo is finding that the security team can focus less on day-to-day issues and more on long-term strategy and planning. Proton Pass helps team members stay secure automatically: "We don't need to automate regular password changes anymore. We would only need to instruct team members to update their password if we see some suspicious activity."
Sharing securely for minimized risk
Sharing passwords and secure data is part of every workday, notes Eduardo: "Customer passwords were centrally accessible, but of course we also needed to share passwords." But every share creates risk.
Eduardo elaborates on one risk: "For example, the HR team encrypted files with passwords, and as the passwords needed to be short to retain, they used common words in their passwords. So, with some guessing, everyone could figure out what the passwords were on those files. We also didn't have a sharing solution for passwords."
To help every team at SPIE share data securely, Proton Pass offers fully customizable sharing, with temporary or permanent access as needed. Single items such as passwords can be shared, or entire vaults can be created to share information among authorized team members. External sharing is also easier using secure links:
"Using secure links to facilitate temporary external sharing is a use case that we have a lot, and it's helping us."
Success with Proton Pass
The rollout of Proton Pass in SPIE's Swiss office has been overwhelmingly positive. Eduardo notes that while many team members are getting to grips with a new tool to use, the impact is obvious.
"About 92% of the office are using it. It's also clear that using Proton Pass is maybe the easiest part of the rollout. The feedback that they have about usability is very good. The feedback is very, very good. At the beginning people found it strange, but once they understood the concept behind a password manager, I think they feel much better because they don't have to remember all of their passwords."
With a view to improving password hygiene throughout the business, SPIE is considering a further rollout of the tool across more offices: "We're starting with 400 users in Switzerland, and I think maybe that in the next few months, if we can show the value to the other countries and if we also have good feedback from users, other countries can follow."
If you’re interested in working with Proton Pass, visit our product page or contact our sales team to learn more.