Nobody likes managing passwords — remembering, maintaining and regularly changing them is a chore that most computer users avoid. Now, Canadian software developer AgileBits is aiming to make that chore easier — or at least cheaper.
AgileBits’ 1Password password manager now has a new subscription plan for individuals. AgileBits’ family and team password management platforms have been successful, so now it has introduced a service that’s aimed at individuals for use at work or at home.
Simple and Safe
The Toronto-based AgileBits is offering its 1Password platform to individuals for $2.99 per month, which provides access to 1Password’s baseline functions. Those means 1Password will remember all passwords, along with PIN codes, documents, credit cards and more.
The service also makes it easier to change weak or duplicate passwords, and lets users sign into their accounts with a single click. Users can sign up online before September 21 for a free six-month trial, the $2.99 subscription cost is activated after that.
1Password is available on Windows, Mac, Android, and iOS, with options for consumers and businesses. The program also includes some new features, such as built-in automatic sync across devices, data-loss protection, secure document storage, Web access, and easy restoration of deleted or changed files. It integrates with all popular browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera.
“Using our new service provides the simplest and most feature-packed way to use 1Password,” wrote AgileBits founder Dave Teare on the company’s blog.
Risky Company Move?
Are services like 1Password worthwhile? Travis Smith, senior security research engineer at Tripwire, told us that there’s conflict about the value of managed password services in the security business.
“On one side, there’s the risk that the third-party service is breached and/or your master password is compromised, resulting in a complete loss of all your accounts,” said Smith. “Considering the number of breaches announced every year, it has to be considered within the realm of possibility that this can happen.”
But the benefit of using password managers is the ease with which they create unique and complex passwords for users for every site, according to Smith.
To get the benefits of 1Password’s new hosted service, users must subscribe to the new plan on 1Password.com. Users can cancel at any time and if their subscriptions ever lapse, they will still be able to view and export all their data.
AgileBits gets its revenue entirely from its customers, and Teare acknowledged on his blog post that the idea of giving away its signature product (actually, its only product) was a bit frightening. But the company has faith that customers will want to stick with 1Password once they’ve tried it, he added.
Dave Teare:
Posted: 2016-08-04 @ 1:46pm PT
One of the things we’re most excited about with our new service is everyone gets their own personal Account Key, which is never sent to our servers. This is combined with your Master Password to encrypt your data, which means that even if our servers are ever compromised, people’s information will remain safe. Even if a weak Master Password is used (we highly discourage that), it would still be infeasible to decrypt the data we store without the Account Key.
There’s several other things we do as well to make the information we store as useless as possible. We don’t want to be a target 🙂
Cheers!
–Dave Teare
AgileBits Founder
