Why Sharing One Login Is Never as Cheap as It Looks
"Just use my login" has caused more IT headaches than some actual outages.
It always starts innocently. A software tool charges per user. The business wants to save money. Someone says, "just use my account." And now six people are using the same username like it's the office stapler.
This can feel practical in the moment. But depending on the software, it can turn into a massive pile of technical debt.
The obvious problem
Security. One shared password means one leak compromises everyone who's ever used it - and you have no way to know who actually had it at any given time.
The less obvious problem
The business slowly loses control. You can't easily tell who did what. You can't remove one person's access without changing it for everyone. You can't assign proper permissions. You can't trust the activity history. You can't always meet vendor, insurance, or compliance expectations.
And when something goes wrong, everyone suddenly becomes a detective. A very annoyed detective.
It's not about buying more licenses for the sake of it
This doesn't mean every business needs to overbuy software licenses for every tool. It means access should match risk. For some tools, shared access is merely clunky and mildly annoying. For others - financial systems, client data, anything with an audit trail that actually matters - it's a future problem with a calendar invite already waiting for you.
The cheaper login is not always cheaper. Sometimes it's just the first payment on a cleanup project.