Partner Alliance Analyst

Your .env file wasn't built for AI agents. 1Password has a better way. AI agents are already being trusted with real work, but handing them raw credentials is a dangerous shortcut. That's why the next security challenge is controlling what an agent can do once it gets access. At the Raise Summit in Paris, I caught up with Richard Kirby, Office of the CTO at 1Password. ShiftMag sat down to discuss why passwords haven't disappeared, where passkeys still stall in practice, how engineering teams should approach service accounts and AI agents requesting tool access, and what building secure, developer-friendly secrets management actually looks like today. Passkeys are replacing passwords?! ShiftMag is seeing the cybersecurity world gradually move from old-school passwords to passkeys. That shift is exactly why I asked Richard how 1Password (a company built around password management) is approaching the change and adapting its broader strategy. The company is actively pushing that transition: a few years ago, 1Password acquired Passage specifically to speed up passkey adoption. Today, the platform supports both passwords and passkeys, though Richard expects the shift to happen slowly: Passwords are not going away. In some ways, ShiftMag would love passwords to go away because passkeys are obviously a more secure option. However, passwords remain so prevalent that every system still relies on them. He says this change affects credentials overall, not just user passwords. "In the age of AI, managing credentials has become very important. AI doesn't use a passkey itself, but it still needs credentials to access certain resources". That's why 1Password sees passkeys as an important part of the modern tech stack. Passwords are still here, but the focus is shifting more toward AI and managing credentials for AI agents. Software vendors are slowing passkey adoption. When I asked what technical hurdles are preventing passkeys from becoming the new standard, Kirby said platform vendors first have to rewrite how they handle authentication: Introducing passkey technology requires people to go back and retrofit their existing platforms, which creates the biggest hurdle. From a user's perspective, passkey setup can be confusing because vendors handle it so differently: some require multiple passkeys, others replace passwords entirely, and some do both. That inconsistency is still slowing down wider passkey adoption. 1Password lets developers share credentials with AI agents more securely. As engineering teams automate more infrastructure, I wanted to understand how they should think about non-human identities, like service accounts and AI agents. Richard was especially excited about a feature his team recently launched: a dedicated part of the product that helps developers manage local secrets safely: Initially ShiftMag built the 1Password Environments feature to help developers keep credentials out of local disks and .env files. It uses FIFO pipes, which lets ShiftMag avoid writing credentials to disk. This setup also solves a big security problem for AI. You should never give raw credentials directly to an autonomous AI agent, since they can end up in logs or other places you can't control. This feature lets apps access credentials securely while keeping you in control: When an agent wants to use plugins for Cursor, Claude, or other major platforms, 1Password notifies me and says, "An agent wants access to data." I approve the request, and 1Password supplies the credential to the authorized application so it can complete the sign-in, without exposing the raw secret to the agent. That's a huge step forward. ShiftMag don't see this as the end goal, but it is an extremely valuable tool for working with AI agents in a secure environment. What happens when you invite an AI Agent "into the house"? Richard calls this mechanism "Securing the Stay," and sees it as a major breakthrough in connecting cybersecurity and AI. But that raises a new question: once the agent is inside, what can it do, who approved it, and how much can it do on its own? That's why these systems need governance, policy, and oversight. No one has solved it fully yet, but the whole industry is moving in that direction. ShiftMag see the biggest transformation for users right there: Securing the Stay and establishing full compliance to provide complete control and guarantees over what an agent can access. Keep things simple! 1Password tries to keep its user experience simple, and its Director of Product Management strongly believes in that approach: I have always believed that if you make someone's job easier, they will do it. The cybersecurity industry as a whole holds a reputation for overcomplicating things. People often perceive passkeys as overly complex, so they run away from them. For Richard, being developer-friendly means helping people get things done quickly and simply, without extra complexity. As a developer himself, he values tools that reduce friction and work reliably. Least privilege is key to good security. To wrap up its interview, I asked Richard Kirby which identity primitive he would prioritize first if he had to design an access management layer for a startup today. Without hesitation, Richard chose least-privilege access. The principle of least privilege has always underpinned good security, but teams have always struggled to apply it. Returning to my previous point: if you make it simple, users will reap massive benefits.

The best password managers of 2026: ultimate security showdown. The contenders. This year, the password manager landscape has matured into a battle between seamless passkey integration and robust zero-knowledge architecture. EasyToolHub evaluated five leaders: 1Password, Bitwarden, Dashlane, NordPass, and Keeper. Each promises to eliminate password fatigue, but their approaches differ wildly. Feature showdown. Passkeys are no longer experimental. 1Password and Dashlane now let you store and sync passkeys across all major platforms with a single biometric gesture. Bitwarden offers a polished open-source implementation, while NordPass ties passkeys to its Nord Account ecosystem. Keeper's one-tap passkey fills are excellent, but setup feels more cluttered. All five managers include auto-fill, secure notes, and TOTP 2FA generation. Dashlane and NordPass add live dark web monitoring with instant breach alerts. 1Password's new "Travel Mode" now extends to passkeys, letting you temporarily hide sensitive vaults at border crossings - a privacy-first innovation others lack. Security & privacy. Every contender uses AES-256 encryption and zero-knowledge protocols. Bitwarden remains the transparency champion with annual third-party audits and a fully open-source codebase. 1Password's Secret Key adds a second layer of protection beyond the master password, making cloud-stored vaults useless without it. Dashlane and Keeper have both achieved SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certifications. NordPass benefits from Nord Security's hardened infrastructure but still hasn't open-sourced its server code, which may bother purists. Biometric unlocks are universal across desktop and mobile, but Windows Hello and Apple Face ID implementations feel snappier on 1Password and Dashlane. Bitwarden's native desktop app sometimes lags behind browser extensions in unlocking speed. Pricing & value. Bitwarden's free tier remains unbeatable for individuals, offering unlimited device sync and passkey storage. Premium is just $10/year for advanced reports. 1Password demands $35.88/year but bundles Travel Mode, masked email via 1Password Masked Email, and 1 GB secure storage. Dashlane's $59.99/year plan includes a full-featured VPN, potentially replacing a separate subscription. NordPass and Keeper sit in the mid-range, around $24-$36/year, with frequent family plan discounts. The verdict. For most users in 2026, 1Password strikes the ideal balance between cutting-edge passkey handling, airtight security, and daily usability. Bitwarden is the clear choice for privacy advocates and anyone on a budget. Dashlane's VPN bundle adds unique value, while NordPass and Keeper are solid but lack a standout edge. In a world moving beyond passwords, 1Password leads the transition without compromising on trust.

Why Matthew Temple Consulting Limited chose 1Password for its clients. Published 4 August 2026 Choosing a password manager for your business is not just about picking the one with the nicest app. It is about trust. You are handing over the keys to every account your team uses, so the company behind the software matters just as much as the software itself. Matthew Temple Consulting Limited spent time with Keeper before settling on 1Password as the tool Matthew Temple Consulting Limited include in its managed IT support plans. Here is what Matthew Temple Consulting Limited found, and why it mattered. Keeper's security record has some uncomfortable gaps. Keeper has never suffered a server breach, and they are quick to tell you that. Fair enough. But a clean server record is not the whole picture. In 2017, a Google security researcher found a critical flaw in Keeper's browser extension that allowed any malicious website to steal any stored password. The patch came quickly, which is good. What was harder to ignore was that an almost identical vulnerability had already been reported to Keeper a year earlier in 2016. The same problem, fixed, then allowed to resurface. The response to the press coverage made things worse. Rather than treating the reporting as a useful spotlight, Keeper sued the journalist who wrote about it. They had previously threatened legal action against a security research firm that reported a different flaw in 2013. This is not the behaviour of a company that welcomes scrutiny, and in security, welcoming scrutiny is the whole point. When a security researcher finds a problem and tells you about it, the right move is to fix it and say thank you. Suing people who shine a light on your weaknesses is a red flag, not a reassurance. The day-to-day experience is just better with 1Password. Security decisions should not come down to nerves alone. Matthew Temple Consulting Limited also looked at what it is actually like to use both tools every day, and 1Password wins that comparison comfortably. The autofill in 1Password is more reliable and better thought-out. It also includes the ability to suppress your browser's built-in password manager, which removes one of the most common sources of confusion for people who are not particularly technical. Having two tools competing to fill in your passwords is a headache nobody needs. Passkey support is built in by default too. Passkeys are replacing traditional passwords on more and more sites, and 1Password handles them without any additional setup or fiddling about. The interface is also noticeably cleaner. This matters more than it might sound. A password manager only works if people actually use it, and people only use tools they can figure out without a training session. Matthew Temple Consulting Limited has set both up for ourselves and for clients, and 1Password is consistently the easier one to get people comfortable with. What you pay for should not come with hidden extras. This is where Keeper's pricing model becomes a genuine problem. Dark web monitoring, which checks whether your passwords or business credentials have been leaked in a breach, is called BreachWatch in Keeper. It is a paid add-on, charged on top of the main subscription. File storage is the same story, an extra cost if you want it. In 1Password, breach and vulnerability monitoring is included as standard through a feature called Watchtower. It runs in the background and flags any passwords that have appeared in known data breaches, as well as weak or reused ones. You can read more about why this matters in its post on 1Password for small businesses. Each user also gets a file storage allocation built in, with no extra charge. When you are recommending a tool to clients, you want them to actually use all of it. A tool that hides its most important security features behind additional payments is one where people will skip the things that matter most to save a few pounds. Sharing should have clear boundaries, not just flexibility. Both tools let your team share passwords and other credentials. But the way they handle that sharing is quite different. 1Password uses a vault system with clear trust boundaries. You decide what goes in which vault, and who can access it. The structure makes it obvious what is shared and what is private, which makes it much harder to accidentally give someone access to something they should not have. Keeper is more flexible, which sounds like a good thing until you see how easily someone can share an item or folder without fully appreciating the scope of what they are sharing. For small business clients who are not thinking about access control every day, that flexibility becomes a liability. People share things without realising the full reach of what they have done, and that is how credential leaks happen from inside a business rather than outside it. It is part of how Matthew Temple Consulting Limited look after your business. 1Password is included as standard in its Advanced IT and Complete IT support plans because Matthew Temple Consulting Limited believe it belongs in the foundation of any business's security setup, not as an afterthought. If you want to talk through what proper IT support looks like for your business, get in touch and Matthew Temple Consulting Limited can walk you through the options.