Background 🙈

Pre-Pandemic, if I needed a password reset to access a jump server. I would just peek across my cubical and ask my colleague Z to provide me with a quick password reset, so I can connect to the server and complete my task. Once the pandemic hit, I noticed that more and more people were asking for password resets in several chat channels. At times, it gets repetitive and no matter how much you try to keep track of your passwords, they will always expire. Welcome to being an IT consultant.

As a system consultant, I was part of a team that handled tickets for numerous clients. One client can have more than one system and each one of them had a different username/password combinations. Certain systems are used on a daily basis, other you have to access them once a month or just to check the logs when they are down. Some of our clients were more sophisticated and had alternative jump servers that allowed you to reset your password if it expired, the majority don’t have that feature enabled for reasons beyond the scope of this post.

Trackpass 💡

Certain teams have archaic systems to help them keep track of their password status, those systems are not efficient and time-consuming. I heard of managers asking their team members to take 30 minutes a week to test their password and track the expired ones. Most organizations don’t allow anyone to change passwords for system admins, that in itself wastes more time.

TrackPass is NOT a password manager!

The main problem that I aim to solve with TrackPass is to help teams have a better way to track down expired passwords and give teams a better insight from an organizational perspective.

Some main features are:

• Allow user to receive a tailored report accordingly to their needs in order to help them avoid facing password expirations.
• Allow managers and team leads to have a full insight of their teams passwords standing.
• Allow team members to submit simple tickets, as avoiding password expiration is near impossible for several reasons; a common one is organization wide password expiration due to security audits or compromises.

Conclusion 🏁

I strongly believe that as simple as it sounds, TrackPass can help organizations save time and become more efficient when it comes to password expiration tracking. I will be looking forward to writing more posts about the progress, challenges faced during the design/development as well as dive deeper in certain topics related to organizational password management when it comes to IT/system admin teams.