ClickUp’s success story with Cerby: Revolutionizing provisioning for apps without APIs and SCIM
ClickUp is an all-in-one productivity platform built to streamline project management, collaboration, and communication. With over 10 million users, ClickUp helps teams from startups to large enterprises stay organized, productive, and aligned.
As ClickUp scaled, user lifecycle management for SaaS apps became a growing pain—especially for “disconnected apps” beyond the reach of its central identity provider. Apps in this category, which lack APIs or require premium plans for SCIM functionality, had to be managed manually. That’s the reality the IT team regularly faced, with no automation in place for critical security processes such as user provisioning and deprovisioning.
Beyond disconnected apps, credential management for shared accounts—especially corporate social media platforms—became another challenge. As the marketing team struggled with the growing complexity of shared access, Cerby’s role became essential. By implementing automated, secure access controls for social media platforms, Cerby enabled ClickUp to safely share account access with global content creators and agencies outside the organization. This ensured that all collaborators had seamless, secure logins from the start, allowing marketing campaigns to run smoothly and securely—ultimately playing a crucial role in their success.
Beyond social media, other critical business applications also required secure automation—from user provisioning and deprovisioning to enforcing MFA and managing credentials—helping IT eliminate time-consuming manual processes and focus on higher-value work.
“Cerby was a game changer for us. Account deactivation for apps that do not support SCIM used to be a slow, manual drain on IT—or required costly license upgrades for SCIM functionality. Now, it just works. With Cerby’s reliable security automations, user deprovisioning is seamless, giving our team peace of mind”
Alex Raducanu, Sr. Systems Engineer
Challenges before Cerby
ClickUp’s team faced several roadblocks that were slowing down IT and creating security risks:
- Manual processes draining IT productivity: Hundreds of hours were spent annually on manual account provisioning, deactivation, and user access audits—pulling IT away from more strategic work.
- Password headaches: Shared credentials–such as those required for social media accounts or SaaS administrative accounts–created a security risk when employees left. . IT had to manually rotate social media passwords to mitigate this risk.
- MFA issues: In one case, MFA relied on SMS, with one person gatekeeping access as codes were sent to personal phone numbers. The alternative was disabling MFA entirely, seriously undermining account security.
- Delayed user deprovisioning: SaaS admins struggled to deprovision users across time zones quickly, often leading to lingering access and increased security risks.
The Cerby Solution
Cerby stepped in and automated the most time-consuming and risky processes:
- Automated password rotations: No more insecure shared access methods and manual password changes. Cerby rotated passwords automatically—quarterly, on-demand, or triggered by user deactivation.
- Real-time on / offboarding: As soon as someone left, Cerby automatically deactivated their access to apps that otherwise do not support SCIM or user-management APIs and terminated their active sessions, eliminating delays and the risk of lingering access. Cerby also enabled real-time onboarding, for Just-in-Time (JIT) provisioning of access.
- Frictionless MFA: Cerby allowed ClickUp to enforce seamless MFA, delivering one-time codes directly to end users—even for shared accounts—ensuring security without sacrificing user experience or productivity.
"With Cerby, we seamlessly brought disconnected apps into our security and identity framework, automating critical tasks like deprovisioning and password rotations. This has drastically reduced manual IT work and strengthened our overall security posture."
William Levie, Sr. Manager, IT & Facilities Operations
Key results
- 97% reduction in time spent managing user access manually for apps protected by Cerby
- 82% faster audit preparation for user access controls
- 258% ROI on their investment in Cerby
With Cerby, ClickUp streamlined user management, eliminated manual processes, and freed up IT resources—all while ensuring seamless security across their app ecosystem.
