1Password has unveiled 1Password® Unified Access, a new agent security platform designed to help organizations securely deploy AI agents and automated workflows without losing control over credentials, secrets, and machine identities. As enterprises rapidly integrate AI into production environments, the need for real-time visibility and control over access has become critical. Therefore, Unified Access enables organizations to discover, secure, and audit access exactly when it occurs, ensuring stronger governance across both human and non-human identities.

Built on a clear and structured operating model, Unified Access focuses on three key pillars: discovery, security, and auditing. First, it identifies existing AI agents and exposed credentials across environments. Next, it secures them through continuous authorization and centralized vaulting. Finally, it audits every action performed by both users and AI agents, ensuring full transparency and accountability. As a result, organizations can move beyond traditional identity security approaches that only focus on login authentication.

“Agents are now operating inside real production environments,” said David Faugno, CEO of 1Password. “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.”

Moreover, Unified Access addresses a growing gap in modern security frameworks. While SaaS adoption and single sign-on (SSO) improved authentication processes, they failed to address how credentials are used after login. Today, AI agents execute workflows, call APIs, and access sensitive systems on behalf of users, significantly expanding the attack surface. Consequently, organizations require a more dynamic and continuous access control model.

At launch, 1Password is collaborating with major AI and developer ecosystem players, including Anthropic, GitHub, Vercel, and Perplexity, among others. These integrations ensure that security is embedded directly into the environments where developers and AI systems operate. For instance, Anthropic’s Claude will leverage 1Password to securely autofill credentials, while developer tools like GitHub and Vercel will integrate secure credential management directly into CI/CD pipelines and coding workflows.

Unified Access introduces several powerful capabilities. The Discover feature, available immediately, identifies AI tools, agent activity, and exposed secrets such as plaintext configuration files and unencrypted keys. Meanwhile, the Secure capability allows teams to vault credentials with a single click, enforce governance policies, and manage access across human and machine identities in a unified system. Additionally, the upcoming Audit feature will provide end-to-end visibility into credential usage, including who accessed what, when, and under whose authority.

Looking ahead, 1Password plans to further enhance the platform by enabling scoped, runtime-based credential issuance for AI agents. This approach will significantly reduce persistent access risks and strengthen governance as AI adoption scales across enterprises.

“As agentic coding tools become part of how modern teams build and ship software, security needs to integrate directly into the developer workflow,” said Talha Tariq, CISO at Vercel. “Through our partnership with 1Password, we’re making it easier for developers to access credentials securely within the tools and environments they already use, so they can move quickly without compromising on sound security practices.”

“Runlayer is the agent control plane for the enterprise, providing the security, governance, and observability organizations need to deploy AI agents in production with confidence,” said Andrew Berman, CEO at Runlayer. “As agents take real action across enterprise systems, credential management becomes a critical control surface. By integrating with 1Password, we’re ensuring that every agent session Runlayer manages has secure, auditable access to the credentials it needs, and nothing more. When security is built into the foundation, organizations stop treating AI adoption as a risk to manage and start treating it as a capability to accelerate.”

“As enterprises begin to offload work from humans to AI, agents are going to require secure, scalable access to the same credentials and related resources people rely on,” said Stephen O’Grady, Principal Analyst at RedMonk. “This is the challenge 1Password’s Unified Access Platform was built to address.”

“AI adoption is reshaping our threat model,” said Heather Cannon, Director of Security at DigitalOcean. “As an Agentic Inference cloud serving digital and AI native enterprises, we’re seeing AI agents become part of everyday workflows. For DigitalOcean, it’s no longer only about individuals mishandling credentials. We need clear visibility into which AI systems are operating across our environment. Using Unified Access helps us better understand and govern AI usage to reduce shadow AI risks and securely scale AI adoption.”

Overall, 1Password’s Unified Access represents a significant shift toward identity-first security in the age of AI. By combining continuous discovery, real-time protection, and deep auditability, the platform enables organizations to confidently scale AI-driven innovation while maintaining strict control over access and credentials.

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