How a Travel Agency Fixed Their Password Problems and Built a Culture of Security

KHM Travel started as a small, family-owned business and today employs more than 70 full-time staff working out of a multi-office complex in Brunswick, Ohio. As the business has grown, so has its technology needs, and more team members has meant managing access to more accounts and login credentials.

According to Megan Rose, KHM Travel's Technology Manager, the travel agency needed a safe, secure way to share passwords, as well as onboard and offboard employees. Manually sending passwords was becoming chaotic and difficult to manage.

“We have a whole bunch of vendors we work with, and so we have accounts with each of those 20+ preferred suppliers. Whenever a password change would happen, it would be pretty disruptive,” says Megan.

Offboarding employees was a heavy lift.

Megan shares, “In the past, if we had someone in a technical role for example, and we knew they had access to all these passwords, HR lets IT know before anyone else and it’s like, okay, open up the 50 sites we have to change a password on and be at the ready. Then as soon as the employee finds out, that’s when you’re hitting the button on all these sites and changing all the passwords. That was a really stressful process from a management perspective.”

With Dashlane, the process of sharing (and revoking) passwords has been tremendously simplified. Before KHM Travel implemented a password solution, it was difficult to ensure the right employees had access to login credentials.

Now they have a comprehensive view of exactly who has access to what accounts and can even control the type of access, ensuring only select employees can change or delete passwords.

Dashlane’s secure sharing portal in the web extension

“Limited rights is especially nice,” Megan explains. “We use the limited rights versus full rights a ton. And I feel like that’s really helpful because sometimes people will accidentally delete a password. Password history is another really, really nice thing for us and it saved us a few times when someone typed their email address into the password field or did something that was totally off the wall.”

Not only does Dashlane save KHM Travel time when offboarding employees, but it also offers peace of mind.

“It’s a lot easier to offboard people because you just go in and remove their account. It saves time and there’s just that level of comfort knowing that you revoke something and they won’t have access to it,” says Megan.

Dashlane’s Admin Console gives a comprehensive view of employee password behavior, displaying exactly how many weak, reused, or compromised passwords each employee has.

Dashlane's admin dashboard showcases the company-wide password health score, the number of compromised passwords, and other important metrics.

This has allowed Megan to be proactive.

“I look at Password Health Scores every time I log in to the Admin Console,” Megan shares. “I like being able to sort them. That’s really, really convenient because I would have no way of seeing that information except through the Admin Console. It’s nice to have a screenshot of the people that are below a certain level.”

Megan appreciates that she has all the insights and visibility she needs to know where her organization's greatest credential risks are.

She adds, “I can just message people and say, ‘Hey, you’re in the bottom 10% of security scores.’ Plus, when I see they only have like 10 passwords, I can say, ‘You only need to change like three of these to get your score up. This is the easiest thing.’ So it’s good because I can give them a little dose of perspective along with the advice.”

Employees’ Password Health scores encourage KHM Travel’s team members to take charge of their own security online. There is an element of gamification built into the product in terms of improving the Password Health Score—watching that number go up and switch from red to green.

“People are competitive with themselves on their security scores, which is really nice too, because then it’s intrinsic and it’s not like we’re telling them what to do,” says Megan. “It’s like they understand what’s important and they just do it on their own. So I think it’s empowering in a way.”

In addition, Dashlane’s security alerts keep employees informed about breaches and hacks in the news that they might otherwise miss.

“The average user does not keep up on that stuff,” Megan shares. “People who work in technology probably would know. I mean, I knew days before the last one was announced who it was, but my end users would not have known unless they got it from me. So that saves me some time and having to convey the information.”

Implementing Dashlane has changed the way KHM Travel thinks about security.

“Getting Dashlane kind of spring-boarded us into more security awareness, which we didn’t previously have,” says Megan. “I ended up forming a committee at our company because we didn’t have anyone dedicated to security.”

Since then, the company has grown from 50 employees to over 75, and their credential security needs have grown as well.

“It was important to build the groundwork of security understanding,” Megan explains. “Using Dashlane brought the issue a little more to the forefront of the average person’s mind and got them thinking about security as something that everyone is responsible for versus something that just the tech team does.”