We all know that the number one password management solution is the trusty sticky note. You write down your complex password on the sticky note, and then hide the note in a place you can find it (hopefully not on your monitor).

The second most popular way to store commonly used credentials (such as root, administrator, sa, etc.) is to put them all on a spreadsheet and then share that spreadsheet with those that need access to the credentials on the spreadsheet. For better security, some companies create different spreadsheets for different parts of the organization.

Why Do Auditors Hate Password Spreadsheets?

Spreadsheets drive your auditors crazy because there is no way to know who has seen the passwords on the spreadsheets, when they saw the info, nor is there generally any way to control access to part of a spreadsheet, much less track when/if passwords get changed.

Why Support Password Spreadsheets If We Have Full Password Automation?

Simple: not every company is ready or can afford to switch over from spreadsheets to a fully automated privileged identity management.

Many companies need to migrate off of publicly shared password spreadsheets, to something that is more secure, and then have a path to automation when they are finally ready. IT budgets, resources, and expertise may be limited, so the best solution is to migrate the spreadsheets to a secure solution to meet minimum regulatory requirements, then move up to an automated solution later.

Password Spreadsheet Manager

At the Gartner Identity and Access Management Summit on 14 September 2011, we announced a new product offering known as Password Spreadsheet Manager (PSM).

PSM allows you to seamlessly import your spreadsheets in minutes to a safe, secure and encrypted database (Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle 11g) that provides easy web based audited and delegated access to the rows in your formerly shared spreadsheets.

How is Password Spreadsheet Manager Different From Competitor’s Products?

Our objective was not to create another “secure” file vault - these suffer from the same flaws as a shared spreadsheet: lack of detailed spreadsheet row level tracking. Without detailed row-level tracking, the solutions from competitors provide little improvement over spreadsheets kept on Microsoft SharePoint.

PSM’s Objective: take the insecure and prevalent methodology of shared password spreadsheets and convert it into a row-level secure and auditable shared database with all of the scalability, security, and broad systems integrations you would expect from an enterprise quality application.

PSM provides all of the things you need for security such as workflow approvals, multi-factor authentication, role-based authorizations, and integrations to trouble ticket systems, loggers, and SIEM systems. This product also integrates with the products of our privileged user management (PUM) and session monitoring partners including: FoxT, Balabit, ObserveIT, and Viewfinity.

A Path To The Future

Converting from insecure password spreadsheets to PSM allows you to quickly provide secure access and management to shared credentials. Depending on your industry, it may be necessary to regularly change credentials, as well as immediately after disclosure or employee turnover. With PSM, the password changes must be done manually as required using either labor or scripts.

When a customer wishes to automate the local password change process after disclosure, PSM can be upgraded to our Random Password Manager product. If you have the more complex scenario of changing not only credentials, but also where they are also used in the middleware/application stack, you can upgrade to our flagship privileged identity management product: Enterprise Random Password Manager.