Password Manager Setup Guide

A password manager is not a luxury tool. It is the boring piece of household and small-business plumbing that lets every account have a different password without asking your memory to do impossible work.

Pick one vault and use it properly

Bitwarden, 1Password, Proton Pass, and KeePass can all be reasonable choices. The best one is the one you will actually use on your phone, laptop, and browser. For most families and small teams, that means a cloud-synced manager with a browser extension and mobile app.

• §Choose a reputable password manager with active security documentation.
• §Create one strong master password as a passphrase you can remember but would not say in ordinary conversation.
• §Turn on MFA for the password manager itself before importing anything important.
• §Install the browser extension and mobile app so saving and filling passwords becomes the easy path.

Move the important accounts first

Do not try to fix a decade of passwords in one heroic evening. Start with the accounts that can reset everything else or move money.

1. 01Email accounts, especially the one used for password resets.
2. 02Banking, accounting, payroll, and payment services.
3. 03Work accounts, domain registrar accounts, and website hosting.
4. 04Social media and messaging accounts used by the business.
5. 05Anything shared by a family or team.

Use the generator, not your imagination

When you create or change a password, let the manager generate it. Long random passwords are exactly what these tools are for. You do not need to know them; you need the vault to store them and fill them on the right site.

If you import passwords from a browser, delete the exported file as soon as the import is finished. Those CSV exports are plain files full of secrets, and they do not belong in Downloads for the next six months.

Make sharing boring

For a family or small business, shared passwords should live in shared vault collections, not in text messages, spreadsheets, or a note called "logins". The person who leaves the organisation should lose access to the collection, not require everyone else to remember which messages they once received.

• §Use a family or team plan where more than one person needs shared access.
• §Keep personal and work vault items separate.
• §Review weak, reused, and breached passwords monthly at first, then quarterly.
• §Store recovery codes somewhere deliberate: printed and locked away, or in a separate recovery process.

The win is not perfection. The win is that one breached cafe loyalty account no longer unlocks your email, your bank, and the domain name your business depends on.