1Password and cloud giant Amazon Web Services (AWS) are expanding their partnership to enhance cloud security and support enterprise demand for hybrid environments as AI tools and AI agents adoption grows.
This move strengthens the already existing partnership between the two companies, with 1Password’s Extended Access Management platform already available on AWS Marketplace. The new strategic collaboration agreement further extends 1Password’s presence throughout the AWS ecosystem, according to Monica Jain, head of global strategic alliances with the Toronto-based password management company.
The collaboration, announced this week, is aimed at making it easier for organizations to adopt AI tools in general and, more specifically, expands the support for joint customers, Jain
wrote in a blog post.
“It also reflects the rising demand from enterprise organizations for secure, scalable access across cloud environments that support developers and AI agents [and] also fuels global expansion and accelerates innovation in agentic AI via co-developed solutions,” she wrote.
Agentic AI and Cloud Security
Cloud computing seems like a natural destination for AI agents, providing the necessary scale, compute power, storage capabilities, and global reach necessary to run these emerging AI tools. Kalpesh Parmar, an SEO and AI automation specialist with cloud giant Alibaba Cloud,
noted in a column that “AI agents might look simple to the user, but they need a lot of power to do their job. They process huge amounts of data, run advanced models, and make decisions quickly. Running all this on a local machine isn’t easy.”
That puts even greater importance on hardening security in the cloud, which increasingly is becoming a target of threat actors. Analyst firm The Futurum Group in a survey released last month found that 80% of organizations experienced at least one significant cyber event over the previous 12 months and that
cloud security incidents were the most commonly cited type, with 31% of respondent calling them a top concern.
In addition, between 2023 and 2024, CrowdStrike’s Counter Adversary Operations group saw a
75% jump in cloud intrusions. Such worries are helping to fuel an expected growth in the global cloud security market from $2.7 billion this year to
$6.6 billion by 2029, according to analysts with market research firm Statista.
Fighting Secrets Sprawl
The 1Password-AWS collaboration is putting a focus on what Jain calls “secrets sprawl,” the proliferation of sensitive information like API keys, tokens, encryption keys, and passwords across an increasingly distributed IT environment that greatly expands the attack surfaces organizations need to protect.
“Modern organizations are driving innovation and integrating AI deeper into everyday workflows,” she wrote. “Security leaders must rethink how to protect identities as cloud workloads, applications, and agentic AI systems multiply. At the same time, secrets management is an increasingly fragmented and high-risk process. Secrets ... are the backbone of modern software. Managing them securely is essential to protecting customer data, maintaining trust, and enabling fast, confident innovation.”
The expanded partnership integrates 1Password’s platform with AWS’ Secrets Manager service to sync secrets across distributed environments without the need for coding or SDK configuration, which is important as AI agents grow their presence in the cloud.
“Without standardized identity models or security controls, companies often give AI agents hardcoded secrets or shared credentials, bypassing managed authentication methods and worsening risks related to secret sprawl,” Jain wrote. “1Password empowers customers to build AI agents securely by eliminating hardcoded secrets, enforcing least-privilege access, and delivering visibility into agent activity.”
MSPs, MSSPs Can Join In
MSSPs and MSPs, which often augment the AI and cybersecurity capabilities of organizations, can expect to take advantage of the collaboration. A year ago,
1Password rolled out a new global partner program that not only focused on helping partners improve the security and compliance of their customers but also offers access to channel- and customer-facing teams within the company and the ability to grow profit margins and expand pipelines.
For MSPs in particular, the program includes multi-tenant management, simple billing and invoicing, and multi-user provisioning, with the vendor
saying in a blog post that “all this functionality and more will allow MSPs to manage multiple customers from a single purpose-built platform.”
The program also came with the company’s
MSSP Incubation Program, with assets tailored to MSPs and MSSPs, more incentives released later last year that included a
10% backend rebate when convincing a business migrate to 1Password from a competitor and opportunities to stack other incentives.
In February, 1Password made the MSP edition of its Enterprise Password Manager
available to all MSPs, with Jason Eberhardt, global vice president of the MSP channel for the vendor, writing that “it’s an exciting and challenging time to be an MSP. Tech stacks are growing to unwieldy sizes, remote work is the new norm, and ransomware and its associated costs are rising. Meanwhile, credentials are still a top initial attack vector in breaches, and it can take a whopping 292 days to identify and contain breaches that involve stolen credentials.”
