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Ask HN: How do you manage shared company passwords?

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Ask HN: How do you manage shared company passwords?

#1

Post by culturestate »

I'm talking about things like client FTP logins and apps / services that don't provide multiuser functionality.

We've used and/or evaluated everything from a shared KeePass db, to commercial apps like Password Manager Pro[1], Passwords Max for Groups[2], and Passpack[3] to a protected Google Docs sheet and an Excel file in Dropbox.

The KeePass solution seems to be the "best", though there are still some caveats - is there a best practice here? Do most small engineering groups roll their own?

1. http://www.manageengine.com/products/passwordmanagerpro/ 2. http://www.authord.com/PP/ppgroups.htm 2. http://www.passpack.com/en/home/

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage shared company passwords?

#4

Post by tallanvor »

There isn't a perfect solution, but LastPass Entrprise or a similar service is probably the closest you're going to get.

KeePass is great, but it's a single user solution. --Even I have to be careful about forgetting to save the database after adding a new entry at work and then going home and adding something else there.

You shouldn't even be entertaining the idea of a Google Docs sheet or an Excel file in Dropbox when you're dealing with client passwords. That's just asking for trouble.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage shared company passwords?

#5

Post by wlk »

It's usually the best to avoid shared passwords:) When possible we try to use either key-based authentication or create separate accounts with the same permissions.

But when we have to do something like that, we just send passwords to each other in a encrypted way (using keys or over ssh session with shared screen). And everyone has his or hers own way of saving passwords locally.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage shared company passwords?

#6

Post by Cogito »

Our company is a services company built around the Atlassian suite of tools. Part of what we do is write plugins for those applications.

We developed a plugin called Security and Encryption Plugin (previously Vault) for Confluence, that allows you to protect any piece of text with GPG encryption.

Any shared credentials get stored in the Vault on the corresponding client's spot in the Confluence wiki, where we store all other data about that client as well.

The private key and pass are shared separately. Once you have the key and pass set up with whatever you use for gpg decoding it works pretty well.

We have a couple of different 'security levels' which are just key pairs where not everyone in the company has access to the private key.

The plugin is paid, but it is supported and has new features added from time to time (for example, you can now share things with specific users, or users who have a password, as opposed to just via gpg private key). If you are already using Confluence it is worth looking at.

Re: Ask HN: How do you manage shared company passwords?

#9

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Cogito wrote: post #6

Our company is a services company built around the Atlassian suite of tools. Part of what we do is write plugins for those applications. We developed a plugin called Security and Encryption Plugin (previously Vault) for Confluence, that allows you to protect any piece of text with GPG encryption. Any shared credentials get stored in the Vault on the corresponding client's spot in the Confluence wiki, where we store a…

Thats fascinating - does it need gpg on the client machines - or (and this is a guess) if you are logged in as Fred, does the server store Fred's private Key?

Actually - I am going to stop guessing - how do you arrange keys and decryption please?

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