Australian Catholic University, one among the premier institutions in Australia uses ManageEngine Password Manager Pro to provide web-based, centralized access to privileged passwords to its geographically disparate IT team; implements password access control and enhances internal security.
IT has now become an integral part of educational institutions. In bigger Universities, the IT department is expected to deliver a variety of services such as providing and maintaining computer systems, networking all departments, creating and maintaining accounts for students and faculty members, facilitating and monitoring internet access and bandwidth usage, lending support to e-learning programmes and research projects and a host of other tasks.
The IT staff are required to deal with a variety of mission-critical IT infrastructure such as servers, databases, network devices and quite a lot of applications.
Being a large University having campuses at six different locations, ACU has a huge IT infrastructure in place. With very limited IT staffing resources, its IT division was finding it difficult to properly maintain and manage the administrative passwords, which give unlimited privilege to the users. With 10administrators requiring access to the IT infrastructure, the problem became complex as passwords had to be securely shared amongst themselves.
"With geographically diverse teams spread over six campuses in Australia, the biggest problem we faced was storing the passwords in a secure, but easily accessible location. We were using printouts of passwords stored in a fire safe. Since the safe was in a physical location, it was difficult to keep the passwords up-to-date. Password Accessibility became a big problem for other team members who were separated by over 1000 km of distance," says Mark Laffan, Team Leader, Network & Communication Systems of ACU National.
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"After we faced a system lock-out incident when a staff member was away, the Infrastructure Manager decided to deploy a software that would allow us to access any password from a remote location, in totally secure manner," explains Mark.
Mark Laffan and his team started searching for the right solution that could take care of their password
management problems. Though deploying a robust, centralized password repository was their immediate goal, they preferred
a complete solution that could automate the entire life-cycle of privileged password management.
"We evaluated a few privileged password management solutions before zeroing-in on ManageEngine Password Manager Pro. We found Password Manager Pro meeting all our needs. Moreover, it was very easy-to-use and we implemented it in our environment immediately," says Mark.
"As the resources and administrators were situated geographically apart, changing the passwords and updating the list proved herculean. Password Manager Pro has changed all that. Password changes are now updated instantaneously and new passwords are no longer distributed to team members via insecure means like email or phone messages," adds Mark.
There were many reasons that led ACU National to choose Password Manager Pro at their environment. "One of the many things that impressed us was the intuitive web-interface of Password Manager Pro that allows users to securely access the passwords from anywhere," says Mark.
"With Password Manager Pro, managing the growing list of system passwords has become much simpler. We have done away with the insecure practice of keeping the passwords in printouts. Password Manager Pro has improved our performance and overall security of the systems we manage on a daily basis," Mark points out.
Maintaining password inventory and provisioning have turned breeze. "When new systems are brought online for a new project, the IT team is able to add the passwords to the Password Manager Pro repository in no time. We are able to grant or revoke password access to new recruits on need basis instantaneously. Above all, users get access only to select passwords and not all the passwords, which greatly strengthens internal controls," adds Mark.
passwords to change if the staff member leaves the University rather than changing all the passwords," explains Mark.
Today, with Password Manager Pro on their side, the IT division of ACU National has total control over all the administrative credentials. Password Manager Pro is playing a crucial role in the secure upkeep of the large university's IT infrastructure. "Password Manager Pro has immensely benefitted our team. We like it very much," Mark declares.
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Password Manager Pro (PMP) is a web-based, Shared Account Password Management Solution for enterprises to control the access to shared administrative passwords of any 'enterprise resource' such as servers, databases, network devices, applications etc. PMP enables IT managers to enforce standard password management practices such as maintaining a central repository of all passwords, usage of strong passwords, frequent changing of sensitive passwords and controlling user access to shared passwords across the enterprise. It is available at costs affordable to SMBs. www.passwordmanagerpro.com
ManageEngine is the leader in low-cost enterprise IT management software. The ManageEngine suite offers enterprise IT management solutions including Network Management, HelpDesk, Bandwidth Monitoring, Application Management, Desktop Management, Security Management , Password Management , Active Directory reporting , Managed Services platform. ManageEngine products are easy to install, setup and use and offer extensive support, consultation, and training. More than 30,000 organizations from different verticals, industries, and sizes use ManageEngine to take care of their IT management needs cost effectively. www.manageengine.com
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