With more firms now deploying AI agents across their enterprises, the need to deploy them securely and safely is becoming critical.

Toronto-based 1Password’s newly launched Unified Access platform allows for the secure deployment of AI agents and automated workflows without companies losing control over credentials, identities and machines.

Such agents will need access to API keys, credentials and other secure information to work, creating a host of security challenges.

1Password is used by over 180,000 businesses, including Asana, Associated Press, Browserbase, Canva, Cresta, Golden State Warriors, Hugging Face, MongoDB, Octopus Energy, Salesforce, SandboxAQ, Slack and Stripe. Its 1Password Extended Access Management product suite delivers zero trust security that protects, manages and governs access to all SaaS applications, whether managed by IT or not.

1Password’s Agentic AI capabilities extend identity security to AI agents and other non-human identities. 

In November, 2025 the privately-held 1Password reported it surpassed $400 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR) while remaining free cash-flow positive.

“Agents are now operating inside real production environments,” said David Faugno, CEO of 1Password in a press release announcing Unified Access. “1Password is deployed on millions of endpoints and protects over 1.3 billion credentials and secrets. As the platform organizations rely on to initiate secure access to applications and infrastructure worldwide, we are uniquely positioned to address the identity and access challenges introduced by agents and machine workloads.

"Unified Access provides the control plane organizations need to scale AI safely.”

Three steps to better security

According to 1Password, Unified Access is made to give firms with AI agents and automated workflows a means of simply identifying existing agents and credentials, secure them and continuously authorize access, and audit every action across human and AI agent identities. 

In a blog post at 1Password, Nancy Wang and Jeff Malnick wrote:

“Unified Access centralizes credentials and secrets in a single, secure vault with consistent policies across humans, agents, and machine identities. It builds on 1Password’s enterprise vaulting foundation, trusted by more than 180,000 businesses and protecting more than 1.3 billion credentials and secrets.”

What is protected, they added, includes employee usernames and passwords, as well as API keys, SSH keys and environment files that developers rely on to connect systems and automate work. 

“Instead of being scattered across local machines, configuration files, shared documents and scripts, credentials are governed in one place and managed with consistent policy controls, even allowing security teams to take ownership of a credential and enable its use without ever exposing the secret itself.”

As the lines between human and non-human access blur, the same credential might be used by an employee today and by an agent or automation workflow tomorrow, the post states.

“Unified Access provides a single source of truth, so access policies aren’t fragmented by where or how work happens. It also changes how credentials are delivered. Rather than distributing long-lived secrets and hoping they’re handled correctly, Unified Access can provide credentials to AI agents and machine identities at the moment they’re needed, evaluating access in context when it’s requested. As more work is delegated to agents, moving from ‘always-on’ access to ‘just-in-time’ access becomes critical.”

"AI is changing who can build, and how work gets done. That means credentials are moving faster, getting used in more places, and being exercised by more than just humans. Unified Access is built for that shift, with visibility at the edge, centralized control, runtime delivery, and unified audit across humans, agents, and machines."