Transcript
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Coming up next on Hands on Windows, we're going to take a look at password managers and how they work in Windows 11.
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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Hands on Windows. I'm Paul Thurat and this is going to be the first of two episodes that I do about password managers. This is kind of in keeping with Our beginning of 2026 Resolution Security Focus kickoff kind of thing. We just did a few episodes on securing online accounts, Microsoft accounts, specifically Windows 11, of course, and I did a two parter on passkeys because passkeys are super important. But the core of our kind of security toolkit as individuals when it comes to protecting our online accounts and really our online identities are password managers. There's a lot of information here, so I had to make a couple of slides. I apologize in advance. I wasn't super excited about it either, but I think it's important just to be able to get through this stuff in a way that makes sense. So let's do that. So just what is a password manager? I think the big thing here is that this is a common thing. We've all heard of this. We all have actually used several of them. Probably. The name is terrible. It's not a password manager. Even in the old days when all it did was manage passwords, it was really managing logins, right? Which is a combination of user accounts or usernames, I guess, and passwords. These days, it's really an identity manager. It manages all your logins, which is that username, password combo, your payment methods, your identification documents, all kinds of personal information, you know, name, address, phone number, that kind of stuff. But they do a lot more too, right? The good ones will generate strong passwords for you. So when you create a new account, it will create this long, complex password. All of them will autofill logins everywhere, mobile and desktop, right? Also auto fill things like payment information, other personal information as needed, as on the web. It will scan your library of logins and look for passwords that are reused that are weak, vulnerable and compromised accounts. And the really good ones will point out the accounts that actually have different two FA methods like authenticator, app support, or passkeys that you're not configured with yet. And then you can go add that to those accounts, right? To make sure that all of your accounts are as secure as possible. This thing will sync to the cloud so you can use it everywhere. And that's a big part of it. You want to be able to use this Everywhere you are. And that means your phone and your PC, but whatever other devices you might have as well, including tablets for example, or if you have multiple devices. Right, multiple PCs or whatever. And these things are protected by the biometric security methods available on your device. So on your phone you'll have something like Face ID or the Android equivalent. On Windows we have Windows hello, of course, with facial and fingerprint recognition. And this is just another layer of security on top of the other layers of security that exists to protect the password manager itself or whatever accounts that you have. And then beyond that, there's actually a lot more. And it depends on which password manager you go with. But you'll see things like emergency and continuity services. So if you pass away or incapacitated, a loved one can access your password manager vault and get into your crucial information when it's most needed. Email, alias generation for newsletters is available on some of them. It depends. And many more. But we're going to stick mostly to the basics here. When it comes to choosing a password manager, I think the most important thing to remember is that I said this earlier. It needs to be everywhere, right? On all your devices. That's, it's big. And then for actual solutions, you know, in the Windows space, I'm going to, I'm going to not focus too, too much on Apple because they have their own thing going on. But I would say there are two main choices that are free and third party and excellent. And those are Bit Warden and Proton Pass. I actually use Proton Pass and I will be using that for whatever examples we have. But one password is very popular. Dashlane is very popular though those are not free, but they're not super expensive for an individual. I think you're looking at roughly $30 a year or even less depending on which one you ch. But like I said, Bit Warden and Proton Pass are free and pretty full featured versions. If you are in the Google and or Microsoft ecosystems, and we are, you might want to use one of those password managers as well. Google has the Google Password Manager built into Chrome. That's something I will look at today, I believe. And the Microsoft Password Manager is built into Edge. And I'll look at that in the next episode. And it's time for a quick break. We'll be right back.