SAVE TIME & MONEY WITH AUTOMATED PASSWORD RESETS

What occupies the biggest chunk of an IT staff’s time? It’s not finding data breach risks, maintaining hardware and software, or improving IT processes. Here’s a hint: it’s something that requires no special skills, but you’re paying handsomely for someone to do it. Here’s another: it only takes a few minutes, but it can occupy up to half of a tech staffer’s day. If you guessed resetting passwords, you’re right. Every time someone puts in a ticket for a password reset, you’re paying a premium for it. That’s costing you time and money that could be better spent elsewhere – and automated password resets enable you to do just that.

Read it and Weep – Password Resets are a Time & Money Sinkhole  

Even though more than 40% of companies need to improve their password practices, most have overlooked the impact that password resets have on their IT team’s ability to innovate. Take a look at these numbers to see the awful cascade effect of manual password resets on businesses, especially IT teams. 

• On average, 20% to 50% of all IT help desk tickets each year are for password resets. That means that about a quarter to a half of what you’re paying for help desk staffing is solely going to pay for password resets. 
• One study taking payroll hours, lost production and efficiency impact into account noted that a single password reset can cost $70 and large organizations spend up to $1 million each year to handle password resets. 
• It takes an average of 24.2 hours to provide a first response to an internal support ticket 
• An average Managed IT Services Provider (MSP) that serves 1,300 users wastes around $9,350 each year just managing password reset tickets. 
• This calculator using averaged data can help you determine the cost of a password reset for your business. 

You’re Losing Steam in Three Big Areas By Relying on Humans to Do Password Resets 

IT Payroll – How much does your lowest-paid IT staffer make per hour? That’s how much you’re paying for a single password reset. If highly skilled personnel are doing password resets, you’re paying even more. Plus, you’re paying for someone to do a simple task that doesn’t require their level of skill – disastrous with a huge backlog of pandemic-delayed security work to do. In a world where IT teams are consistently understaffed because of the IT skills gap, that’s a tragedy. Tech support services on average cost $70 per hour. 

Staff Productivity – If an employee is waiting on a helpdesk ticket to reset their password, they’re not working – and you’re losing revenue. For an average law firm, one tech support ticket for a simple reset password could suck up $500 in revenue. The IT team member doing the resetting is losing productivity too, which is especially onerous because it impacts your IT staff’s ability to perform needed maintenance and vulnerability investigation, increasing your risk of a data breach. This productivity loss is even more problematic if everyone’s working remotely. 

IT Employee Retention – An average service desk receives 492 tickets per month and up to half are password resets. If your IT employees spend an inordinate amount of time on petty issues like that, they’re not going to be very happy about it. No one wants every day to be Groundhog Day at work. On average, every one of a company’s employees is going to call the helpdesk 11 times per year. The number one reason that IT support staff quit is stress, and ballooning ticket volumes play a huge role in that calculation. 

Resetting passwords is not going to go away, but you can quickly and cheaply take it off the IT team’s plate. Your IT team has enough to do. In a recent survey, more than 80% of IT professionals said that they believe that working in IT will get more difficult in the next 12 months, and 55% said that the stress of working in IT has impacted their physical and mental wellbeing. Cut some of that out by choosing a secure identity and access management solution that includes automated password resets. 

Make the switch to automated password resets today to save time, money and headaches. You’ll also increase security and cyber resilience. It’s a win for everyone. Contact an expert at your local MSP to get started.