Secrets Management
with Bitwarden
Managing passwords
in an organisation
Managing secrets and passwords for an organisation is more complex than personal password management. Tools designed for individual use offer good protection for one person, but are not suitable when passwords need to be owned, managed, shared and audited within an organisation.
Bitwarden allows organisations to manage their passwords effectively with:
- End-to-end encryption: passwords are encrypted on your own device, so nobody else, not even Bitwarden, can read them
- Shared collections and user groups, so each person sees only the passwords they need
- Event and audit logs
- Password sharing and revocation
- Bitwarden Send, for sharing sensitive text or files through secure, temporary links
- Single Sign-On with Microsoft Entra ID (Enterprise plan)
- Encrypted, password-protected exports for backup
Requirements and
Recommendation
As the MSP for your ICT systems, we have to manage a lot of passwords for you. We need to ensure:
- The relevant parties have access to the passwords they need. For example, your Tech Lead may need the password to a router and your Marketing Department may need access to a Twitter account.
- When a member of staff leaves, we can audit which passwords they have accessed and reset as necessary.
- In the event of an emergency, business owners have easy access to passwords and can securely make passwords available to consultants or officials.
- The correct tools are available to your staff so we can teach password management best practices.
We recommend Bitwarden based on price, functionality and security. Bitwarden is open source and independently audited every year. It is ISO 27001 certified, holds SOC 2 Type II and SOC 3 reports, and is HIPAA and GDPR compliant. For details, see Bitwarden’s compliance page.
One-touch access to passwords
Your master password needs to be complex. If you access your vault frequently, typing a complex password can be tiresome and poses a security risk.
Install the Bitwarden desktop app from Bitwarden’s download page and turn on unlock with Windows Hello. You can then unlock your vault with your fingerprint, face or device PIN. The Bitwarden browser extension can use the same biometric unlock through the desktop app. Note that the Microsoft Store version of the desktop app does not support this.
Configuring backups
It is important to keep a backup of your organisation’s vault. An administrator or owner of the organisation should:
- Log in to the Bitwarden web vault and open the Admin Console.
- Go to Settings > Export.
- Choose the “.json (Encrypted)” format and the “Password protected” option, and set a strong password.
- Store the export file and its password separately, in safe places.
Ensure you can open the backup and access your passwords.
Secrets for developers
Bitwarden Secrets Manager lets developers and DevOps teams store, manage and deploy machine secrets, such as API keys and certificates, at scale.