1Password, the Canadian password management company, announced Monday a strategic collaboration agreement with Amazon Web Services that puts the firm in position to capitalize on surging enterprise demand for security tools designed for artificial intelligence and cloud-native environments.

The partnership is a major milestone for 1Password, which has transformed from a consumer-focused password manager into an enterprise security platform serving one-third of Fortune 100 companies. The collaboration comes as organizations increasingly struggle to secure AI agents, unmanaged devices, and unauthorized applications that traditional security tools cannot monitor or control.

Monica Jain, 1Password’s head of go-to-market partnerships, told VentureBeat in an exclusive interview that the AWS collaboration has delivered explosive growth over the past 18 months. Contracts sold through AWS average four times larger than typical deals, with win rates exceeding 50 percent across all customer segments from small businesses to large enterprises.

“According to the AWS ISV partner team, in late 2024 they witnessed that 1Password had reached a level of progress that they have not seen in other ISVs,” Jain told VentureBeat. “Within seven months, most ISVs take about 24 to 36 months to get to the point that we got in a very short period of time.”

The strategic collaboration agreement, or SCA, makes 1Password the first Canadian independent software vendor to secure such a partnership with AWS. Amazon rarely enters these agreements, typically reserving them for companies creating new market categories that align with AWS’s security-focused strategy.

Shadow IT and unmanaged devices create massive security blind spots for enterprises

1Password’s rapid growth stems from its approach to what the company calls the “Access-Trust Gap” — the security risks created when employees use personal devices, unauthorized applications, and AI tools to access company data without IT oversight.

Traditional security tools like identity and access management systems typically only govern applications that IT departments know about and have formally approved. However, research shows that only about 50 percent of known applications are actually integrated with corporate security systems, while IT departments remain unaware of most applications employees actually use.

“Today’s employees are working from anywhere, and a wide range of applications are being used, and a wide range of devices are being used to get work done,” Jain explained. “What happens often is that when people are using these applications or devices, they’re usually outside of the visibility of the IT organization.”

This creates cascading security risks. When an employee shares sensitive information through an unapproved file-sharing service and the recipient accesses it on a personal device without multi-factor authentication or endpoint protection, the company’s data becomes vulnerable to multiple attack vectors simultaneously.

Jain illustrated the problem with a concrete example: “Imagine if I sent you sensitive information in a non-company approved file sharing tool, and you accessed it using your personal device. I have absolutely no idea whether the device you’re using has multi-factor authentication, has endpoint detection and response installed, or whether the file sharing platform is secure and not vulnerable to being breached.”

AI automation tools lack basic security controls, exposing companies to new cyber threats

The partnership gains urgency as organizations rapidly deploy AI agents for business automation. Unlike human users, AI agents typically lack standard security measures like multi-factor authentication, instead relying on shared secrets or hard-coded credentials that create significant vulnerabilities.

“Agentic AI is no longer a future concept,” Jain said. “Security risks are increasing and the use of AI is increasing within every organization, and it’s transforming how businesses operate.”

1Password’s Extended Access Management platform addresses this by treating AI agents with the same security rigor as human identities while maintaining the speed and automation that make AI valuable. The platform eliminates hard-coded secrets, enforces least-privilege access, and provides visibility into AI agent activity.

The approach differs from traditional security tools that focus on known, managed systems. Instead, 1Password’s platform secures what the company calls the “managed and unmanaged” devices, applications, and AI agents that legacy identity and access management tools cannot reach.

New AWS secrets manager integration streamlines cloud-native development workflows

As part of the expanded partnership, 1Password introduced Monday a new secrets syncing integration with AWS Secrets Manager, timed to coincide with AWS re:Inforce, Amazon’s premier security conference. The integration simplifies how development teams manage sensitive credentials in cloud-native environments.

The integration allows organizations to consolidate secrets management, enforce role-based access controls, and embed secure credential handling directly into development workflows including command-line interfaces, continuous integration pipelines, and AI-powered automation.

“As a fast-moving agency, flexibility is everything—but not at the expense of security,” said Ivan Blagdan, chief technology officer at Convertiv, a 1Password customer. “1Password Extended Access Management gives us real-time assurance that every device accessing sensitive data—whether personal or company-issued—meets our standards around trust.”

The technical integration addresses a critical pain point for developers who traditionally have struggled to manage secrets securely without slowing down development velocity. By embedding secure access directly into existing workflows, the platform eliminates the trade-off between security and productivity that has plagued many organizations.

Partnership strategy helps 1Password compete against Microsoft and Google’s bundled security tools

The AWS collaboration positions 1Password to compete more effectively against technology giants like Microsoft and Google, which bundle identity management tools with their productivity suites. However, Jain emphasized that 1Password takes a partnership-first approach rather than directly competing.

“We don’t compete, we really are a partner-centric organization that thinks about how do we get to the end customer the way that the customer needs to operate,” Jain said. “We integrate with the tools that Microsoft may be providing to customers. We work with partners like AWS that have huge leverage in the security space.”

This strategy appears to be working. 1Password now secures more than 165,000 businesses and millions of consumers, with 75 percent of revenue coming from business customers compared to just 25 percent from consumers — a dramatic shift from the company’s consumer origins.

The growth trajectory has been consistent across all market segments, suggesting that the security challenges 1Password addresses affect organizations regardless of size. This broad appeal has caught the attention of AWS, which views 1Password as creating an entirely new market category.

“AWS doesn’t get into SCAs lightly,” Jain explained. “They don’t just sign it with any ISV that puts up their hand and says, ‘We’d like to enter into an SCA with you.’ They are very deliberate about who they invest in, and those investments are usually made for companies that are doing things that are different.”

Enterprise security market evolution creates massive growth opportunity for access management platforms

The AWS partnership accelerates 1Password’s evolution from a password manager into what the company calls an Extended Access Management platform. This new category addresses security gaps that traditional identity and access management, identity governance and administration, and mobile device management tools cannot reach.

Leading companies including Asana, Associated Press, Canva, IBM, MongoDB, Octopus Energy, Slack, Salesforce, and Stripe rely on 1Password to secure managed and unmanaged devices, applications, and AI agents accessing sensitive corporate data.

When asked about the biggest competitive threat to 1Password, Jain pointed inward rather than at external rivals: “Our biggest threat is ourselves and how quickly we can make sure our customers are secure, and the customers that we haven’t touched upon today are also secure. Our biggest threat is time and making sure that we can get to those customers in a timely way.”

The strategic collaboration agreement provides 1Password with access to AWS’s global scale, leadership programs, and co-selling initiatives to accelerate market expansion. Jain expects the partnership to multiply the company’s current revenue growth rate by five to seven times.

“Whatever our run rate of revenue is today, we expect that run rate to be, if not five, six, seven times higher by working with AWS,” she said.

For AWS, the partnership strengthens its security portfolio as enterprises increasingly demand comprehensive access management for hybrid and AI-driven environments. The timing appears opportune as organizations embrace AI automation and remote work becomes permanent, positioning both companies to benefit from growing enterprise demand for comprehensive access security solutions.