Earlier this month, popular password manager LastPass announced a major change to its service, allowing individual users to keep track of their passwords across all their Internet-enabled mobile and desktop devices, free of charge.
Today, the company has made two further announcements, in an effort to make password management easier for businesses of all sizes.
First up, it"s launching LastPass Teams, a new suite to help businesses and groups of up to 50 users manage their passwords more effectively. Significantly, the firm says that it will enable people to stay on top of the challenges of password management in the workplace "without needing to be an IT professional". Key features of the new Teams offering include:
- Quick, convenient, and secure team-wide password sharing of one account login or dozens at a time, with either one team member or a group.
- A simple, intuitive admin dashboard where team leads can add or remove team members, control who has access to which sites, set policies for extra security, and keep track of employee activity with automated reporting.
- Unlimited syncing so password changes and policies are automatically updated behind-the-scenes, keeping everyone up-to-date, no matter which device they’re using.
"Being able to share access to passwords with colleagues has become essential to our daily workflow," Joe Siegrist, vice president and general manager of LastPass explained. "With the addition of LastPass Teams, we now have a password solution for businesses big and small."
LastPass Teams is available today "on all popular browsers and platforms", with browser extensions available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer and Opera on Windows, Mac and Linux. You can find out more about it on the company"s website, or get a further brief overview in the video below:
For larger organizations, the latest update to LastPass Enterprise has now arrived.
LastPass Enterprise 4.0 promises a range of enhancements and additions to make password management more flexible, with more customizable features designed to scale up to the biggest of businesses. The update includes:
- Active Directory Sync improvements, including nested groups, simplified filtering, and the ability to update AD configuration directly from the admin dashboard.
- Refreshed user interface for the admin dashboard, making it even easier to manage users and groups, provision access, set advanced settings, audit employee activity with automated reports, and more.
- More opportunities to provision access to popular apps directly from LastPass, with ten new integrations including Dropbox for Business, Trello, Github and more.
- New integration with Splunk enables customers to send activity logs to Splunk so they can keep all reporting in one place.
With its new offering for smaller companies, and improvements to its enterprise proposition, LastPass believes that it now provides the best password management tools for all organizations. Of course, its customers will ultimately judge its success in that regard - and unlike consumers, businesses will have to pay for the services that LastPass offers to them.
LastPass Teams is priced at $29 per user per year for smaller organizations with up to 50 users, promising "simple admin oversight and convenient password sharing for everyone".
LastPass Enterprise starts at $48 per user per year, offering "custom admin controls, integrations like Active Directory, and cloud app provisioning to solve your access management needs, no matter how complex". Organizations already on LastPass Enterprise plans will be eligible to continue paying their existing rate for one further year after their next renewal date, beyond which they may choose to renew at the revised rates, or switch to LastPass Teams if appropriate.