GigaOm Radar for Enterprise Password Managementv3.0

1. Executive Summary

Every organization has employees who are buried in username and password combinations for both business and personal use. The average user has dozens, if not hundreds, of passwords to manage. But these are not the only passwords to consider: there are also machine passwords used for connectivity or the too-often-used practice of having secure keys held in code. Together, this presents a very challenging landscape for IT teams targeted with managing password security, and it comes with a high operations overhead that can be costly, complex, and can easily lead to mistakes. The complexity and frustration of managing passwords can often lead to poor practices that include reusing passwords, writing them down (on paper or a device), saving them in browsers, or holding credentials in code.

These frequently used poor practices make passwords a high-priority target for cybercriminals. They know that compromising passwords can give them control over key systems and sensitive data. This should make tackling the challenge of password management a priority for organizations, but often it is not.

Enterprise password management can be an answer to that challenge. Password managers provide a centralized platform that coordinates the password process, enforces more stringent password controls, and provides users with more secure and simple ways to manage them.

With enterprise password management, passwords are stored in a secure vault that is accessed through a single master logon. Managed passwords often can be applied automatically at a login prompt without the user, machine, or service needing to know the password. This helps to greatly reduce the risks posed by manual entry. Furthermore, password managers help highlight potential password security risks and automate password management, creating unique and complex passwords for users automatically and rotating them to increase password quality. Password managers can often be extended to offer secrets management as a way of handling the complexity of secure key management and rotation.

Password managers are increasingly part of a broader identity management platform, adding capabilities such as single sign-on (SSO) and identity lifecycle management. Password managers also provide a bridge to the goal of removing passwords from organizations entirely by using passwordless technology such as biometrics and passkeys—without the need to refactor the entire authentication process.

The enterprise password management sector has many mature vendors with long-established products. This provides a robust platform to build upon and should provide confidence to the IT buyer. Finding the right password management solution will deliver significant improvement. While its deployment will call for both user education and process change, it can greatly enhance the security of password and other credentials, both human and machine, across an organization. Compromised passwords are a serious threat, and the impact can be significant if they are compromised, so improving password security posture should be a priority for organizations of any size.

This is our third year evaluating the enterprise password management space in the context of our Key Criteria and Radar reports. This report builds on our previous analysis and considers how the market has evolved over the last year.

This GigaOm Radar report examines 13 of the top enterprise password management solutions and compares offerings against the capabilities (table stakes, key features, and emerging features) and nonfunctional requirements (business criteria) outlined in the companion Key Criteria report. Together, these reports provide an overview of the market, identify leading enterprise password management offerings, and help decision-makers evaluate these solutions so they can make a more informed investment decision.