The identity transformation: Analyst and CIO insights

For security and IT professionals, the past decade has brought a series of tectonic shifts that have toppled old assumptions and created new opportunities. First, the SaaS revolution destroyed the paradigm of an IT-governed corporate network. Next, COVID-19 forever altered how and where work gets done. Then, the biggest shockwave of them all arrived: AI-based tools that are rewriting the very definition of “identity.”

Today, the traditional boundaries of the corporate network have dissolved. As organizations race to adopt cloud-native tools and integrate artificial intelligence into every workflow, the "identity perimeter" has become the primary line of defense. 

1Password is working to secure this perimeter. Our framework for identity security is that the right user or AI agent gets the right access to the right app on the right device.

In a recent webinar and report, Francis Odum, founder of Software Analyst Cyber Research, provided a comprehensive validation of 1Password’s strategic direction. His thesis is clear: the future of identity security requires a new framework that secures the "unmanaged" layer of credentials, applications, devices, and AI agents that fall outside the reach of Single Sign-On (SSO) and Privileged Access Management (PAM). 

1Password’s transformation from a consumer password manager into a multi-product identity security platform demonstrates remarkable strategic evolution. Its acquisitions, technical innovations, and expansion into enterprise-grade capabilities reveal a clear intent: to unify password management, SaaS governance, and device trust under one cohesive system.

With disciplined execution and continuous innovation, 1Password is well positioned to become a leader in identity security for both humans and machines, bridging the Access-Trust gap across devices, apps, and intelligent agents in the years ahead."  - Francis Odum, Inside 1Password’s Enterprise Identity Transformation: How access, devices, and AI are reshaping enterprise identity

1Password’s evolution is nothing less than a fundamental reimagining of identity security designed for the age of agentic AI and non-human identities (NHIs). In the webinar, Odum spoke with Abe Ankumah, Chief Product Officer at 1Password, and Blaine Carter, Global CIO at FranklinCovey, about how leaders can find comprehensive solutions to today’s fragmented identity challenges.

Watch the webinar on demand.

Defining the Access-Trust Gap

In Francis Odum’s report, he describes 1Password’s transformation in three “acts.” The first act focused on vaulting and password management, and the second began with the launch of Extended Access Management (XAM). As he writes, “The strategic imperative behind this shift was the need to close what 1Password describes as the ‘Access-Trust Gap,’ the systemic risk created by application sprawl, device heterogeneity, and fragmented identity controls.”

In the webinar, Blaine Carter shared what that systemic risk felt like as his team faced it in real time, remarking that “If you have a large number of users on devices you don’t control, oftentimes using credentials that aren’t your credentials, you really have a large blind spot.”

Carter went on to describe how his team leveraged 1Password Enterprise Password Manager, Device Trust, and SaaS Manager to close the gaps left by SSO and PAM.

We used to be able to say that an app goes into your single sign-on or you don’t use it, but that’s just not how the world works these days. You have to allow people to solve problems, to be productive on applications that might not tie into single sign-on.

We can’t say it’s SSO or nothing – there’s a middle ground in there, and that’s what we were able to find with 1Password for credential management. Instead of saying ‘we’re gonna just stick with Privileged Access Management,’ we said ‘we’re gonna roll this out to every one of our users.’” - Blaine Carter, Global CIO, FranklinCovey

The next frontier: Securing Non-Human Identities (NHIs)

As automation becomes the lifeblood of the enterprise, the concept of "identity" is expanding far beyond human users. Every service account, API key, and AI agent now represents an identity that must be managed and secured. These Non-Human Identities (NHIs) are growing exponentially and creating unprecedented identity sprawl. 

Odum’s report describes how 1Password is taking on this challenge in our next chapter. 

Act 3 represents 1Password’s most forward-looking strategy: establishing itself as the identity layer for machine intelligence. This involves a direct confrontation with the challenges posed by autonomous software agents, which constitute a fundamentally new class of non-human identities (NHI) that legacy access management tools were not designed to govern.”

The adoption of AI-based tools and agents is amplifying existing vulnerabilities, like shadow IT and credential sprawl,  and creating new challenges, such as how to grant these tools the right level of access. 

To address these challenges, 1Password is innovating new products designed to discover shadow AI, prevent unsafe sharing of credentials, and provide time-bound, auditable access to agents. This next act in 1Password’s transformation allows organizations to innovate and automate with confidence. 

Security that empowers users and drives business outcomes

One theme stressed by all three webinar speakers is that 1Password’s vision for identity security is positive, not punitive. The goal is to enable IT and security teams to facilitate innovation, and to empower users to experiment safely. That’s how the legacy of the last decade of upheavals can translate to positive outcomes for IT, security, and users alike. 

When COVID hit, people learned how to solve their own problems just so they could keep doing their jobs, and in a lot of ways that was great, because it kept the business going. But that culture has maintained over the years, so one of the things we’re looking at now is how to adapt to this cultural shift: maintaining productivity, empowering users to feel productive and solve their own problems, while still maintaining a risk level that the company is comfortable with.” - Blaine Carter, Global CIO, FranklinCovey

The analysis provided by Francis Odum and our customers’ perspectives confirms that 1Password is solving the right problems at the right moment. The "identity perimeter" is indeed changing, but that change creates an opportunity to build a more resilient, flexible, and empowered enterprise.

Watch the full webinar on demand or read Francis Odum’s report.