As discussed within an e-mail conversation with the bitwarden support, we’d like to link accounts together like LastPass has this feature.
Allow us to use personal credentials within our business account, but not the other way around.
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Could you provide more details about this feature of LastPass ? Or maybe a link to a webpage describing the feature ?
Ofcourse. See here. Really useful feature when you use bitwarden with a separate personal and business account.
This feature is highly rated for our company, and why we haven’t made the jump yet.
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This is highly desirable for us as well.
A different option would be to allow multiple instances of BitWarden to be open at once to allow for two accounts to be viewed at the same time (tabbed accounts would be ideal in this situation)
The Personal/Business separation is a great pull.
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For me this would solve a problem. I’ve got my own self-hosted bitwarden server (w/ premium account) but my employer is looking into using bitwarden, too. I’d rather keep my own bitwarden server. Of course, I can use my new account on the company servee but still I’d like to keep it separate.
Please note that this involves two separate self-hosted servers so it may complicate things a bit.
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I really like the idea of this feature, though I think the name seems kind of a misnomer if all you want to do is enable the clients to keep sessions on multiple accounts and/or servers simultaneously. (It’s not so much as “linking” accounts as much as enabling simultaneous sessions). If the latter could be accomplished with the clients being easily able to switch between sessions, I think that would be a great pull.
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This is not really the feature that is being requested. The feature requested is to really link an account - mainly link a personal to a business account. In that case I only have to sign in on my business account (within my business profile of Chrome or my business notebook) to access my personal accounts - which is quite useful.
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Trying to think of a way this could work with Bitwarden’s current model:
- [email protected] is account A (Mr. X’s personal account)
- [email protected] is account B (This account was created for business use of Mr. X)
- Account B is a member of the organization, there are many collections shared with Mr. B. We will refer to the organization as “the org” and any or all collections as “the shares”
Possible method 1
- acct. B clicks a button to “Link second account”
- The account link screen will ask for email, password, and 2FA if active.
- Once the account is verified, Acct A will create a special collection between Acct B and Acct A only, and Acct A will share every single password with that new collection.
- When Acct A logs in and decides to unlink Acct B or vice-versa. (Either account can initiate) the collection is removed and all items from Acct A are no longer shared with that collection.
Some problems:
- iirc a single item can only be shared with one collection at a time… this would need to be changed.
Possible method 2
- acct. B clicks a button to “Link second account”
- The account link screen will ask for email, password, and 2FA if active.
- Store the email and password in a special invisible login, and activate a flag stating that Acct B can access Acct A items.
- When the flag is active, and populating the vault etc… fetch the Acct A items as well by just fetching the login info from the invisible login item and attempting to fetch everything.
- When either side decides to unlink. Forcibly delete the invisible item from Acct B and remove the flag.
Problems:
- What if Acct A changes their master password…?
- UI for deciding which account to save something to might be confusing…
Conclusion
It’s doable… but idk how high priority it is as you could easily accomplish the same task by using different user profiles on your browser.
ie. my “Personal” Chrome is logged into my personal Gmail and my personal Bitwarden account on my extension. My “Business” Chrome is logged into my company GSuite and my company Bitwarden account on the extension. I could even theme it so the windows are different color, making it easier to separate work from private.
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I don’t have a need for this, but if I did I’d use the solution in your last para. I do this anyway for reasons unconnected with BW, as I have different profiles for personal use, and 2 web sites I maintain. I habitually have 3 Chrome sessions open, and I use a different BW account in each. I find it simple and very effective.
This would be great feature. My only request is it allows to specify hosting address for each account. I have one company I’m holding off on transitioning to Bitwarden because the owners are using personal lastpass and company lastpass linked. For the company they want self-hosted for personal they want hosted.
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I would actually prefer if I could have a single account with multiple email addresses like GitHub.
You can add [email protected] to your [email protected] account, then your organization can invite you based on your organization email address.
I think this would also be significantly easier to implement over adding a feature that allows you to browse two accounts at the same time across all of the applications.
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I second that. I’ve been using the chrome profile way for months now, and find it unnecessary difficult. On mobile it’s even worse. Single account multiple addresses would work.
This feature request is indeed for the opposite. I’m using Chrome profiles myself for years and have Android for Work installed, which separates my personal and work life. I find the way LastPass currently manages this extremely efficient.
I need my personal credentials on my business profile from time to time, because some websites (like GitHub) prefer only one account with multiple e-mail addresses - but other cases it’s just a separate account, and so having my business passwords in my personal account could just be a data breach, or harder to make restrictions on for companies.
It is not common practice to have multiple accounts logged into the same application. In the example you referenced, Chrome profiles, two profiles cannot be used at the same time. In order to use different profiles, you must switch profiles manually, but the sessions are not shared.
If your company does not want you to mingle personal and business data, then you should not be logging into your personal BitWarden account on your business device or business profile.
In regards to a data breach, unless you have a weak password on your personal account, the data breach is going to be related to the BitWarden server, the BitWarden client, or the implementation of BitWarden itself. In cases where company data is highly sensitive, there should be a configuration option for on-premise BitWarden servers to require a dedicated account with no shared emails.
I prefer Sean’s suggestion best. It means signing in two times instead of one, but it keeps everything clean and easy.
IMHO this can be as simple as Bitwarden releasing a copy of its existing browser extension and calling it Bitwarden Business, with a different icon color or design.
This won’t help people who need more than 2 accounts, but that seems to be a small group. It’s a quick, practical and minimal effort solution for everyone else.
The way 1Password handles it is weird. When you add your businesses cloud account along side your personal vault, it assumes you are you and lets you into both your personal and business account after you login with your personal password. The business session is saved (I’m assuming encrypted/saved to the personal vault locally).
I personally would prefer it is a multi account setup where when you’re logged out, you can click the account you wish to login with and enter the password for that account. When you think about mobile implementation, this works well.
At work he have Bitwarden hosted on premise and personally I use the cloud solution so I would like just the possibility to log into both in the app without any linking as they have no way of knowing about each other.
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This does not work on mobile or desktop (application, not browser). In our business, most of our users are 90% mobile and desktop. Mobile is the biggest since it’s BYOD and several of our users will likely have their personal and work accounts on a single device. Desktop, maybe not as big of a deal.
From an enterprise perspective this is a huge “no no”. You do not want your users using ANY personal accounts on your network. Bitwarden should be your holy grail, and should be the most hardened system you have. If a personal user has a weak master password, how does that translate to your company policy? How do you associate [email protected] to an employee? When litigation comes, how do you define what data is the user’s and the companies?
I think there’s other features on the Enterprise side I’d want to see first before time was spent trying to link personal accounts into Enterprise/Business accounts.
1 Like