Ask where your business keeps its passwords. For most small businesses the honest answer is a mix: a spreadsheet, sticky notes, the browser, a WhatsApp message from two years ago, and someone’s memory.
That works until something goes wrong. A staff member leaves and still knows the login to your bank portal, your website and your social media. A phone is lost. Someone reuses one weak password everywhere, and one breach somewhere else opens every door.
What a password manager does
A password manager is a secure vault. Each person remembers one strong password, and the vault creates and stores a unique, strong password for everything else. It fills the logins in automatically on your computer and phone.
For a business, the real value is control:
- Shared logins in one place. Things like the company Wi-Fi, the supplier portal or the social media accounts live in a shared folder. People who need them get access, and people who don’t, don’t.
- Staff changes become simple. When someone leaves, you remove them and end their sessions on every device. You don’t have to hunt down every password they ever knew.
- Your data stays private. Everything is encrypted on the user’s device before it’s stored. Even the person who runs the system can’t read your passwords, and neither can we.
- No more reusing passwords. The vault creates a different, strong one for every site.
The one thing you can’t recover
There’s one trade-off. Because nobody else can read your vault, a forgotten master password can’t be reset. That’s the price of real security. Two things make it manageable: an emergency access feature that lets a trusted person request access if something happens to you, and a sensible habit of keeping the master password and recovery codes somewhere safe and offline.
Add a second lock
A password manager is much stronger with two-factor authentication, where you enter a short code from an app on your phone as well as your password. Two tips:
- Don’t keep those codes only inside the vault they protect.
- Plan for a lost or replaced phone. If every code lives on one handset, losing it can lock you out of everything. There are safe ways to keep a backup, and it’s worth setting that up now.
Look after it like any important system
A password manager holds the keys to your business, so treat it that way:
- Keep it updated.
- Turn off open sign-ups once your team is set up.
- Back it up properly and test that you can restore it. Taking a copy of a database while it’s in use can produce a broken backup, so it should be done the right way.
- Keep the admin controls away from the open internet.
Hosted or on your own server?
You can use a hosted service, or run the same kind of system on your own server so you control where the data lives. Both work. Which is right depends on your size, your budget and who will look after it. We can set up either.
Ready to get rid of the sticky notes? We’ll set up a password manager for your team, move your existing logins across and show everyone how to use it. Get in touch and we’ll sort it out with you.
