Password Managers (idea #204)

Password managers are rapidly becoming a requirement for the entirity of our population, as both private citizens and members of organisations, however the available password management solutions fall short of meeting the needs of the most basic users - nevermind the more complex needs of organisations. Building a password manager that meets all the basic needs of the population would strengthen our populations.

What are these needs?

Single User

Single users are private individuals who need password managers to be secure and convenient. They may use their password manager at work or at home. Some of their passwords are very personal - like bank accounts and government ID's - and some of their passwords are commodoties - Netflix and Spotify accounts - and some passwords are practically meaningless and worthless.

Private individuals have highly varied levels of financial and physical security, often these change with little notice. It is also the case that those with little financial and physical security could benefit the most from the protections of a well designed password manager.

• Multiple device support
• Multiple device concurrent access
• Not always online
• Simple and automatic backup
• Sane merging
• Encryption of basic user

Organisation

Organisations may be families, friends, charities, companies, and governments. These are naturally 'multi-user' environments. Multi-user password security emphasises delegation, control, and merging.

• Simple and automatic backup
• Multiple device support
• Multiple device concurrent access and modify
• Not always online
• Sane merging
• Re-secure when a user leaves

General features

• Mistake tolerance. People delete things inadvertedly all the time; password managers should be mistake tolerant.

Possible architectures

Given an entry:

• You want to be able to search parts of it
  • To identify when it is to be used
  • username
  • login portal
• Unlock it
  • As