Case Study

Oregon State Rallies AroundPassword Security

After consolidating several of their information technology(IT) departments, a leading university needed an easy-to-use,
secure and highly efficient password management solution.

Challenge• Independent IT departments using a variety of password management solutions• Problems accessing data after IT consolidation

Solution• Password manager and digital vault• 2FA protection against unauthorized access• Automated complex password generation• Password vault access via mobile devicesResults• Increased efficiency• Ability to identify and strengthen weak passwords© 2021 Keeper Security, Inc.

2About Oregon State University
Oregon State University is an international publicresearch university serving more than 30,000 students.
In addition to the main campus in Corvallis, Oregon,
the school has a second campus in Bend, Oregon,
15 experiment stations and 35 extensions. Oregon
State ranks in the top one percent of higher education
institutions in the world.1

Josh Zojonc, Lead Infrastructure Engineer, started
mapping plans and requirements for a password
management system to meet OSU’s needs without
added complexity. “We wanted it to be simple tomanage, yet powerful,” Josh recalled. “We werelooking for a solution that would operate independentof OSU’s network, be fully auditable and, of course, beas secure as possible.”

The Keeper Solution
The Challenge
Oregon State University (OSU) is a multifacetedorganization with facilities across the state. Over theyears, quasi-independent IT departments had formed
to address the organization’s growing IT needs. To
improve efficiencies and better leverage talent, OSU
decided to consolidate these teams into a single unit andstandardize processes and procedures.
improveefficiencies
andbetter
ToTo
improveefficiencies
andbetterleveragetalent,OSU
consolidated
theirleveragetalent,OSUconsolidated
theirITIT teams
singleteams
intoaintoa
singleunit.unit.
The consolidation revealed that OSU’s IT teams weremanaging mission-critical passwords in a variety ofways. Some used spreadsheets and freely circulated
them among team members for password sharing.
Others created shared drives to house passwords, someof which had not been changed in a decade. Still others
used simple text files or clunky single-user applications.
As a result, after consolidation, many users could noteasily access the systems and information assets theyneeded to do their jobs.

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 regon State University ranked among the top 1 percent of world universities,”
OOregon State University, November 8, 2017

As part of their due diligence, Josh and his team
tested trial versions of several password management
solutions. They chose Keeper because it offeredunmatched security and the best shared password
vault solution to meet OSU’s requirements. Keeper
also met the team’s criteria to provide two-factor
authentication (2FA) capabilities, automated complex
password generation and password vault access via
mobile devices. “We set expectations with users thatthey’d have a secure and very easy way to sharepasswords; in other words, a simple solution that didn’t
get in their way but was very effective. That’s what
Keeper delivers.”
Keeperoffersunmatchedsecurity
andKeeperoffers
unmatchedsecurity
and
the
best
sharedpasswordvaultsolution
tothebestsharedpasswordvaultsolution
meet
OSU’srequirements.
to meet
OSU’srequirements.
Some users take advantage of Keeper’s ability toshare increasingly popular digital certificates, which
are small files installed on a server to allow secureconnections from the server to a browser. Others use
Keeper to store private keys.

© 2021 Keeper Security, Inc.

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The Results
The most immediate and obvious benefit of the Keeper
password manager was eliminating clumsy, less secure
methods of sharing passwords. As a bonus, streamlining
password management was one of the simpler parts of
the IT consolidation, thanks to the Keeper support staff’sefforts during evaluation, deployment and early usephases.
The Keeper security analytics scorecard, which tracks
effectiveness as the solution is deployed and used,confirmed OSU’s security improvements. “Our scores
definitely went up,” Josh noted. “Now that we have atool for making regular password changes, we can start
incorporating a new password refresh policy into theautomation projects we have on the drawing board.
Another big benefit is the ability to root out and replace
inherently weak passwords, which I know is a major
contributor to data breaches.”

Weakpassword
passwordsecurity
securityleads
leadstotomoreWeakmore80%
thanof80%
data breaches.
thandataofbreaches.

About Keeper
Keeper Security develops leading password manager
and security software for protecting businesses andclient information. Keeper works with companies ofall sizes across every industry to mitigate the riskof data breaches, bolster data security and privacy,
increase employee productivity and strengthen
cybersecurity reporting and compliance.
To learn more about Keeper Security’s leading
password manager and security software, visit
keepersecurity.com.

The Impact
As an internationally renowned university, OSU needs
unmatched data security to protect its employees,
students and valuable information assets. Weak or stolen
passwords lead to more than 80% of data breaches,2
which means organizations must make password
management a high priority. Keeper gave OSU aneffective, easy-to-implement solution to simplify andstreamline password management during a criticalorganizational change.

1

Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report, 2017

keepersecurity.com | sales@keepersecurity.com

REV 4.16.21 © 2021 Keeper Security, Inc.

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