Account Transfer Policy

Keeper is zero-knowledge: nobody, including Keeper and including us, can read a vault by force. That is the entire point of the product, and it creates one problem every business must answer before it becomes urgent.

The question: an employee leaves, is fired, or is hit by a bus. Their vault holds the only copy of credentials the business runs on. How does the business get them back?

The answer is Account Transfer: a policy, configured in advance and consented to by each user, naming which admin role may inherit a locked user's vault. Configure it late and it does nothing for anyone who already left.

A vault moving from a departed user to a designated recipient

How it actually works

The two setup steps are easy to confuse, so be precise:

Administrative permission — the admin role that will perform transfers needs the Transfer Account permission ticked.
Enforcement policy — on the role your staff sit in, turn on Enable Transfer Account and choose, from the dropdown, which admin role may receive those vaults.

Step one: the Transfer Account administrative permission

🖼️ Our own console: the enforcement policy and the role we chose
Our Admin Console: Enforcement Policy → Transfer Account, showing the chosen role.
Not uploaded yet — add it at /admin/screenshots (slot live-transfer).

The consent step, which is where it quietly fails

Once the policy is on, every affected user gets a prompt at next login and must Accept it. Acceptance performs an encryption key exchange, which is what makes a future transfer mathematically possible. Users get seven days; after that they cannot use their vault until they accept.

A user who never accepted cannot be transferred, ever. A policy that looks configured but has unaccepted users is a policy that will fail on the day it matters. Check acceptance, do not assume it.

Note also: if you later change which admin role is the recipient, everyone is re-prompted and must accept again.

What happens on the day

Lock the account from the user's panel. Transfer is refused on an active account. This is the safety interlock that stops an admin quietly draining a live vault.
Choose Transfer Account and pick the recipient.
Records, folders and deleted items move into the recipient's vault, gathered into a single folder named after the original owner.
The original account is then permanently deleted. There is no undo, and the user is notified at each stage.

Say it to the customer honestly

Say this to a customer"Keeper is built so nobody can read your team's passwords — not us, not Keeper. That's exactly what you want, right up until somebody quits and takes the only copy of your bank login with them. So we set up in advance one named role that can inherit a vault when an account is closed. You choose who. Nothing can be taken from anyone while their account is active, and they're told if it ever happens."

Customers hear "someone can inherit my vault" and tense up. Get ahead of it: the account must be locked first, the recipient is their choice, and every user is asked to consent in the open.

The Simple Technologies rules — enforce these

The recipient is the customer's own owner or admin, never Simple Technologies by default. A business's credentials belong to the business.
We may be the recipient only with a written agreement and explicit owner approval. If a customer asks on a visit, do not agree on the spot. Flag it for Chase.
Set it during onboarding, alongside the first user invites.
Verify acceptance before you call the deployment done.

Where we hold that role under agreement it is a real obligation, not a checkbox: it means we can be handed the credentials a business runs on. Treat those customers accordingly and never take the role informally.

Check on every visit

Is transfer enabled on the roles real staff actually sit in?
Which admin role is the recipient, and is that still right?
Have all users accepted? Any stragglers inside their seven days?
Does the owner know who the recipient is? If not, have that conversation now rather than at a tribunal.

Go deeper

Keeper docs — Account Transfer Policy — the authoritative procedure, including the consent prompt
Keeper docs — Enforcement Policies — where Enable Transfer Account lives
Keeper — Vault Transfer overview — the customer-facing explanation, useful for quoting

Keeper product screenshots from Keeper Security's partner asset pack. Internal Simple Technologies training material, covered by NDA — not for redistribution.

Simple Technologies · Login Lab — a training sandbox. Nothing here is a real account. · Guides · Training Track