Security for a one-person company: passwords, mail and a VPN

Start with the accounts that can lose you the company

The domain registrar, the mailbox, the bank and payment accounts, the store admin. Turn on two-factor authentication on each of them, and keep the recovery codes somewhere that is not the same mailbox. Everything below exists to make that easy to keep up.

A password manager

One long passphrase you remember; every other password generated, unique and stored. 1Password keeps logins, two-factor codes and passkeys in vaults, and a shared vault gives a contractor access you can revoke later. Its browser extension only fills a login on the domain it was saved for, which is what blunts a phishing page.

Encrypted mail on your own domain

Proton Mail encrypts mail end to end between Proton users and stores everything else encrypted at rest; a custom domain comes with the paid plans, and Calendar, Drive and VPN sit under the same account. It is a good home for the accounts above, whether or not the day-to-day mail runs elsewhere.

A VPN, and what it is for

On public Wi-Fi a VPN encrypts the traffic between your device and the VPN server, so the network cannot read or alter it, and sites see the VPN's address instead of yours. It does not make you anonymous and it does not replace two-factor authentication. Surfshark covers every device you own on one subscription.

An afternoon's checklist

• Registrar: two-factor on, auto-renew on.
• Mailbox: two-factor on, recovery codes in the password manager.
• Bank, payment and store accounts: unique generated passwords.
• VPN installed on the laptop and the phone, on by default away from home.
• Personal and business logins in separate vaults.

All the tools, by category: Tools for a one-person company.