There are countless cases of password and data theft, credential stuffing, and other crimes related to passwords. Password theft can devastate a business and expose its sensitive information. People nowadays are burdened with plenty of passwords used for social media, bank accounts, employee logins, and other applications they use every day. Therefore, forgetting passwords is common. But it leads to security and privacy issues, reduced productivity, frustration, and unnecessary stress. And if they use the same password everywhere (which many people do), it’s also dangerous. It’s because if any employee uses a weak password or uses the same password for multiple accounts, they’re putting their company at risk. And, if a password is short or predictable, it’s easy to memorize but also simple for a hacker to guess. Similarly, reusing the same password is risky because if it’s ever included in a leak, cybercriminals could use it to access all the accounts of that person. Don’t worry; there’s a solution. But first, let me ask this – Have you ever found yourself staring at a login screen, trying to remember what password you chose months ago? Or, have you worked with someone who always forgets their login credentials? That’s where 1Password comes in. Thousands of businesses trust 1Password to keep their most important information safe. Companies like Slack, IBM, and GitLab have chosen 1Password Business to be confident that all of their employees won’t forget their work-related passwords. So, it can be a powerful solution to help you secure your passwords and sensitive information. In this article, I’ll review 1Password to understand how effective it can be for your business and family. Let’s start!
What’s 1Password?
Trusted by over 100,000 businesses across the globe, 1Password is a secure password manager that helps protect your passwords and sensitive data. 1Password provides the safest and easiest way to share your passwords, login information, credit card records, and other critical data with trusted individuals in your family, friend circle, or team. Even if you forget your password, no worries, 1Password remembers it. With 1Password, you only need to remember “one password” (called Master Password) and let it remember and manage the rest for you. This Master Password can protect all other passwords you want to secure in a private, secure vault. As a result, you can rest assured that your passwords are safe from hackers and other harmful elements and focus on your tasks. This not only provides productivity but also helps you avoid breaches and build a culture of security. There’s so much more that has attracted 100,000+ businesses to 1Password. Easy deployment, integration with other identity and access management (IAM) platforms like Okta, Azure Active Directory, and Rippling, and tools that allow IT administrators to set permissions at scale or customize access by user, group, or vault.
1Password Features
Powerful Administration
You can set permissions, customize access by group, vault, or user, and assign admin responsibilities and tasks to trusted team members that help manage your 1Password account. It also includes account recovery, assigning custom roles, adding guest accounts, and shared vaults.
Custom Reporting
1Password enables you to detect potential threats in advance with robust custom reporting. You can also check if your business credentials or email address are exposed during a data leak and invite your team members to 1Password and secure the exposed data. In addition, gain insights into your business to understand how 1Password is being implemented with the help of analytics. You can also integrate it with tools such as Splunk and create detailed logs and alerts.
Security at Home
Apart from your business, you can even protect your passwords used at home. It will create a good habit of safe password practices. Also, if you use 1Password Business, you can avail yourself of FREE 1Password Families for your employees.
Watchtower
Watchtower is an excellent and convenient-to-use security feature that can track password breaches, security problems, and other related issues to help you keep your passwords, data, and accounts safe. For this, it finds weak, duplicated, and compromised passwords. In addition, 1Password also enables you to check sites using unsafe HTTP or missing 2-factor authentication. The tool alerts you immediately upon finding any password issue so you can take immediate action. This way, it helps improve your password hygiene. You can also view a list of your reused passwords and change them to enable better protection. Additionally, Watchtower can monitor critical information such as the expiration dates of your credit cards. It also saves you time spent on updating your payment information when you are shopping online.
Multiple Vaults
1Password allows you to store your data into separate vaults and manage it conveniently. It helps you separate your data and logins so you can find and access them in no time. Instead of aggregating all the data at the same place, and then keep on scrolling through this vast list, separate your personal data like bank accounts and credit cards, family documents, work logins, etc., in different vaults. And you can create any number of vaults you want. In addition, you can have better control over your vault’s security and access permissions by specifying who can see, edit, or manage data. Sharing your vault with a trusted person is also a safe option where 1Password creates a key tied to that person’s email address. It ensures the information is shared only with trustworthy people.
Secrets Automation
Thanks to the Secrets Automation feature, you can store, manage, share, and secure your infrastructure secrets like API tokens, application keys, and private certificates. It also protects your credit cards and logins and supplies all this data when you need it. With this feature, you need no more post-it notes by the office router, no more spreadsheets that are always out of date, text messages, emails, and Slack notifications asking how to access the company server. 1Password leverages Secrets Automation to provide a single place to store and manage your entire business secrets. It eliminates incoherent audit logs and saves you time. It encrypts your secrets and provides the decryption keys only to you. Hence, they never access, store, use, sell or share your data. In addition, you can connect Secrets Automation to services like Ansible, Kubernetes, Terraform, and HashiCorp. It also includes ready-to-use libraries in Python, Go, and Node.js.
Travel Mode
Another impressive and unique feature of 1Password is its Travel Mode, useful for users wanting to hide their sensitive data while crossing international borders. You can safeguard information like social media credentials, encryption keys, etc. It’s crucial because border control authorities may request to check your smartphone for identity proof or open apps on your device and gain your personal information. When you turn on the Travel Mode in 1Password, only those vaults that you have marked safe will be visible. It helps hide the vaults with sensitive data until you turn off the Travel Mode. In 1Password Business, the admin can control this Travel Mode on their employees’ accounts. It is excellent for businesses who want to hide their work-related sensitive information from getting revealed by authorities.
1Password X
1Password X is the complete 1Password version that works in a web browser. You get a browser extension and run on Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Brave. Working with 1Password is easy and comes with features like auto-saving and auto-filling to make your work easier. But they no longer offer the auto-login feature where your credentials are filled automatically when you are trying to login into an app or service. This makes it more secure as your login data can’t be stolen by hackers. For logins, you can utilize keyboard shortcuts or autofill your passwords and usernames in the extension. This way, it becomes difficult for hackers to steal your data.
Clipboard
Clipboards can contain important information such as passwords when you copy them. Attackers can hack into your clipboard to steal your copied data. This is why securing your clipboard is essential. 1Password lets you clear clipboards after a specific interval. You can also extend the clearing times to 2 minutes on desktop apps, 3 minutes on your Android device, and 90 seconds on iOS. Choose a suitable time based on your work.
Privacy Cards
Privacy cards are digital payment cards that can mask debit card data while making online purchases. They replace the actual information on debit cards, such as card numbers, with different numbers while you shop online. Hence, no one, even the vendor, can know your actual debit card details. 1Password uses a third-party application – Privacy – to enable Privacy Cards. It’s currently available only for US subscribers. It supports MasterCard and Visa debit cards. You can use this feature by creating an account on Privacy and integrating your 1Password account into it. You can also add this Privacy Card in the payment fields; set your spend limit to prevent retailers from posing more charges than the maximum set amount.
1Password Review: Ease of Use
Getting started with 1Password is easy. Just a click is enough to log in to an application or service without any troubles. Next, you can start creating, using, and sharing solid passwords securely and efficiently. In addition, it offers effortless SCIM provisioning and deployment. It integrates well with Azure AD, OneLogin, Okta, and Slack and provides employees with trusted systems. It’s also easy to set up by downloading the application and installing it with simple steps.
Choose your suitable plan. Fill in your email address to receive a 6-digit verification code for verification.
If you choose the FREE trial, you don’t have to give out your credit card details, but it’s needed for other plans. Once these formalities are over, you can go ahead with the master password generation. Create your master password to get a Secret Key, a 34-digit number stored in your Emergency Kit, which is a PDF document provided to users after opening their 1Password account. The Emergency Kit has your email address, Secret Key, the app’s web URL, Master Password, support email id, and a QR code to enable quick account setup. Its apps work across all devices, browsers and operating systems work seamlessly. Furthermore, importing data is also straightforward in 1Password directly from different 1Password accounts or other services for password management such as LastPass, Chrome, Encryptr, etc. They all are easy to use, and there’s a command-line tool that makes it more intuitive.
1Password Review: Security and Compliance
Cyber attackers have become much more advanced. This is why if you are trusting a software solution with your passwords and sensitive information, make sure it provides top-notch security from hackers and malicious activities. Similarly, compliance is also a big responsibility for organizations. You need to ensure your customer data is safe to avoid penalties and reputation loss. For this reason, you need to choose a password manager that takes care of data compliance along with security. 1Password ticks both these boxes – security and compliance – for your business and provides complete control over all your passwords and sensitive business data. It’s compliant with stringent security standards for information integrity, availability, and confidentiality. You get best-in-class security with advanced technologies and concepts such as the Principle of Least Privilege (POLP) to define who can access what data and systems. Get complete visibility by integrating process logs into your preferred logging or SIEM tool. Additionally, 1Password enables you to request access logs programmatically to view which tokens accessed what secrets. For security and compliance, you get features like:
Secure vault with AES-256 encryption and sharing Data encryption in transit and at rest Brute-force prevention with PBKDF2 Account recovery Authenticated, tamper-proof encryption Options for data residency SOC2 compliance Audit logs Custom roles and groups Customizable access rules
1Password Review: Compatibility
1Password is compatible with multiple devices, operating systems, and browsers. You can use it on Windows, Android devices, macOS, iOS devices, Linux, Chrome OS, and command lines. It also synchronizes your data flawlessly across devices and makes your passwords always available to you. Using iOS and Android gives you almost the same feel. Downloading, installing, and setting up all are easy. If you have already set up your account and want to use its mobile version, the process has become even more straightforward. Just look into your Emergency Kit or My Profile segment on 1Password’s site to find the QR code and scan it. All the applications and web versions of 1Password have an excellent user interface. You can quickly locate the settings, categories, favorites, etc. Although Android and iOS apps have similar designs, Android offers better customization options, such as Watchtower.
1Password Review: Support
1Password offers good support 24/7 to its customers with multiple channels, including one-on-one call and email support. You can reach out to them easily with a toll-free number in case you have some doubts, and their dedicated support team can offer the help you need. Their support team is responsive, and if you write them an email, they usually reply within 24 hours. You can also help yourself by reading their comprehensive resources and documentation covering almost everything about 1Password on how to get started and use it. In addition, you can also join their Twitter account to stay updated with it and support forums to find answers. Overall, 1Password’s support system is excellent.
1Password Review: Pricing
1Password offers two types of pricing plans:
Team and business Personal and family
All of them are paid, and there is no free plan available. However, they have provided the option where you can try 1Password FREE for 14-days. Let’s break down all the pricing types and tiers.
Teams and Businesses
This pricing type is for businesses who want to secure their passwords and sensitive data from getting hacked by malicious hackers. Here are different pricing tiers available in this.
Teams Starter Pack: Up to 10 users can use this plan for $19.95/month. Sharing is limited to 5 guest accounts. Business: It’s priced at $7.99 per user per month. It also includes Advanced Protection, and every employee also gets a 1Password Families membership for FREE. It’s helpful as everyone deserves to be safe online, and good security habits shouldn’t stop when your employees clock off for the day. Enterprise: Get a quote from 1Password’s sales team to avail of this plan. It includes all the features you get in the Business plan plus services for large enterprises, such as dedicated account manager, onboard engineer, and set up training.
Families and Individuals
It’s not just businesses, but 1Password is also available for individuals and families. In this pricing type, there are two tiers available:
1Password for personal use: Get all the 1Password apps and stay safe online using this pricing plan that costs $2.99 per month (billed annually). It includes 24/7 support, 365-day item history, unlimited storage, and more. 1Password Families: Secure your entire family and their online footprints with this plan priced at $4.99 per family per month, consisting of 5 members (billed annually). It includes all the features from the personal plan plus the option to recover locked out members’ accounts, sharing with up to 5 guests, monitoring activities, and more.
Conclusion 👈
1Password is one of the best password managers in the market that can help your employees and family members to secure their passwords and information from malicious entities. It offers a fast and convenient way to protect all of your accounts with strong, unique passwords and leverages the latest security technologies and concepts. Thus, you can consider it for your businesses and family and choose a suitable plan based on your needs.
