HOLT CAT sees a high adoption rate of LastPass due to its ease-of-use

Customer Overview

Founded in 1933, HOLT CAT is the authorized Caterpillar® heavy equipment and engine dealer for 118 counties in Texas.

Their commitment-based culture focuses on ensuring their team has shared goals, values and behaviors. Moreover, they give staff the freedom to choose and adopt solutions that help everyone work as a team. 

Challenge

Tony Ledbetter was the first security employee at HOLT CAT. Now, as the company’s Senior IT Security Manager, Tony was tasked to build a cybersecurity strategy from the ground up. 

In reviewing HOLT CAT’s cybersecurity practices, Tony Ledbetter observed a pressing issue: compromised accounts due to poor password habits, such as reusing the same passwords across multiple sites, unaware of the risks posed by doing so.

“If one account gets compromised,” notes Tony, “then all their accounts could be at risk, so we needed a solution that enabled our team to practice better password hygiene, but as we operate on a commitment-based culture, it had to offer a seamless and easy user experience to get their buy-in.”  

With over 350 applications for a team of 3500+ employees, HOLT CAT’s cybersecurity risks were high. They needed a tool that could monitor password hygiene, functionally embed single sign-on (SSO) with their existing identity provider (IdP), and support the business in navigating upcoming acquisitions. 

LastPass keeps you proactive instead of reactive which is why we recommend it. If you’re reactive, you’re losing. Senior IT Security Manager, HOLT CAT

Solution

When it was time to select a password manager, HOLT CAT chose LastPass. The decision was for two practical reasons:

1. Tony chose to pursue LastPass because he trusted it after being a personal user for eight years. “As a long-term user,” Tony said, “I felt LastPass was the only viable candidate and was thrilled at the prospect of expanding my relationship with them and showcasing it to our team.”
2. LastPass seamlessly integrates with their Microsoft Entra ID, which helped to simplify the employee’s user experience whilst adopting cybersecurity organically. 

Tony and Emily Stieglitz, IT Systems Security Specialist at HOLT CAT, were excited about the robust admin controls inherent to LastPass, from customizable security policies to automated onboarding and offboarding via IdP integration. But they were especially thrilled about the many features LastPass provided to end-users, which would allow them to:

• Improve their password hygiene via the integrated password-generator, save and autofill, and shared folders.
• Extend password security to home with free LastPass families account, providing every employee – and up to five of their family or friends – with a premium lastpass account.
• Stay informed and secure with dark-web-monitoring, so end-users can protect their information everywhere.

Results

With LastPass, it’s like we’re enlightening people and making a real difference to their lives, both professionally and personally. Senior IT Security Manager, HOLT CAT

After the deployment of LastPass, HOLT CAT admins began working with their marketing team and their LastPass Customer Success Manager to develop educational onboarding materials which were intended to help them realize the benefits of adopting LastPass.

By showcasing the solution’s ease of use and diverse features, HOLT CAT were able to successfully drive organic adoption. In their first year, they successfully utilized all 2500 existing seats. In their second year, they have a total of 3500 seats with 70% current adoption.

Tony Ledbetter credits HOLT CAT’s successful deployment and adoption to the simplicity of LastPass, as well as support from the LastPass Customer Success team, saying:

“The results have been absolutely remarkable. We’ve reduced our risk significantly and have successfully prevented any password leaks from occurring this year. The LastPass team have been incredibly generous with their time, walking us through demos and educating us to make sure we felt completely supported.”