Backing up 1Password accounts

anrise

Is there a way to manually backup when using the Family plan like you could using the previous Primary vault? If not then how can you assure us that our data is completely safe, and will always be?
Ok sorry I have seen that this has already been answered in another post.
I hope you do offer the ability to backup at some point.

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1Password Version: Not Provided
Extension Version: Not Provided
OS Version: Not Provided
Sync Type: Not Provided

dsoranno

Awesome news with the release of the 1Password Families service! I signed up today and have been working on moving my primary vault to a Family vault.

I noticed that the Mac client is no longer backing up anything that's been moved into the Family Vault. I'm concerned about not having an option to back up this data locally. Is there a way to do local backups? If not, is this something that's being planned?

Thanks!

David

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1Password Version: 6.0.2
Extension Version: 4.5.3.90
OS Version: OS X 10.11.3
Sync Type: 1Password Families
Referrer: kb-search:backup, kb:backup-faq, ug:mac/backup-preferences, kb:understanding-account-key, kb-search:backup

AGAlumB

@dsoranno: Sorry for the confusion! Backups are done on the server side automatically. Local backup is something we may consider adding, but keep in mind that it can't be as robust as full server redundancy. And the true data resides on the server in the first place (which is then transferred to and from individual devices), so that's really the best place to back it up -- both for consistency and simplicity.

And believe me when I tell you that any backup strategy you or I adopt personally isn't going to be as reliable or rigorous, since it depends on multiple moving parts all working properly: the devices, the network, and the people. If any of these fail, a local backup doesn't happen; whereas the data already lives in a server infrastructure (in multiple places on multiple machines with multiple connections) which is much more substantial than anything we can afford to purchase or maintain as individuals. :)

Curt Grimes

I'm loving 1Password Family so far, but this is my biggest concern after moving from a traditional 1Password account. Previously what I liked most about 1Password was that I had a copy of my vault that you couldn't touch (using Dropbox sync). If 1Password went away tomorrow, locked me out of my account, or somehow turned evil, I would still have my data, and I would be able to read it because the vault format is documented publicly. This change to 1Password brings it more in line with how LastPass handles passwords -- everything is on the server. I'm not sure if LastPass provided a way to backup easily though. At the very least, I would feel much more comfortable with 1Password Family/Teams if there was a way for me to have a recurring backup of my vaults placed out of 1Password's reach and avoid having a single point of failure.

prenagha

Agreed that local backup is needed. Having server backup as well is good, but there is no need to have only one or the other. Local backup with a published file format allows the data to be read regardless of what happens on the server side. And as we all know, having just one backup of something in one medium is a no-go.

Aleen

Thanks @Curt Grimes and @prenagha!

We definitely appreciate your concern and desire to have local backups. I've passed your feedback on to our development team for their consideration.

Curt Grimes

Thanks so much @Aleen. I appreciate it.

dsoranno

Thanks for all the responses and comments. I definitely appreciate the redundancy that exists in the cloud for this data. However, I'd say local backups (from the client or the web console) are a must have feature given the importance of the data we all keep in 1Password. The client currently provides the ability of restoring to one of many local backups in case an issue isn't noticed right away. Something similar in the web console for each vault would be ideal along with the ability to download those backups.

Ben

Thanks for the feedback, @dsoranno!

Ben

loconut

I happily jumped over to family vaults and moved my personal vault to my team personal vault... only to find the lack of backups. As much as I want to trust that your company will be around in 10 years when I need to dig up an old password, mergers happen. Servers get confiscated by the FBI because of one bad client. Things happen. I ran an ISP and accidentally rm -rf'd the wrong drive while doing a migration to a new disk. We had backups of course.. but I've also seen companies run backups to tape for years and never test them. Things happen. I need a way to export or otherwise backup my personal and shared team vault. I love 1Password but I can't trust you to always get everything right 100% of the time and stay in business forever.

Also as a PS, I moved from LastPass to 1Password after their server compromise. I realize for teams, some level of server backup is necessary, but I'm still weighing the pros and cons of having it in a server you control vs local and/or third party.

Frankly, I'd be happier with personal vaults and doing password sharing/updates over PGP/GPG encrypted emails rather than explicitly trusting you guys end-to-end...

AGAlumB

I happily jumped over to family vaults and moved my personal vault to my team personal vault... only to find the lack of backups. As much as I want to trust that your company will be around in 10 years when I need to dig up an old password, mergers happen. Servers get confiscated by the FBI because of one bad client. Things happen.

@loconut: Absolutely! That's why AWS (which we use for data storage) is so great: redundancy. Their backups are much more frequent, reliable, and available than any that a device you or I own could make (or store). But keep in mind that you can also copy data to a local vault periodically and back that up as well.

Frankly, I'd be happier with personal vaults and doing password sharing/updates over PGP/GPG encrypted emails rather than explicitly trusting you guys end-to-end...

You can totally do this! Use the Share feature in the app and encrypt the communications when you send it. It doesn't offer any additional security over what 1Password for Teams/Families offers, but if it saves you money and helps you sleep better at night I can't argue with that! :pirate:

But also keep in mind that you don't have to trust us with you're actual data, only an encrypted blob. Since your Master Password is only known by you, your Account Key is only stored locally on your device, and neither (both of which are used to encrypt your data) are ever transmitted, we never have the means to decrypt your data, even if we were to become evil, be purchased by another evil company, or be compelled by law enforcement to hand everything over. :sunglasses:

prenagha

Nobody wants their most important data accessible only via a remote cloud service. Local backups in a published data format are a must.

AGAlumB

@prenagha: 1Password for Teams/Families data is available locally if you setup the apps. As I mentioned above:

But keep in mind that you can also copy data to a local vault periodically and back that up as well.

You can also export to 1PIF (which is an open, JSON-based format) or CSV at any time. Cheers! :)

prenagha

Select All Vaults
Select All Items
Control-A to select all
File Export menu option is disabled

Being able to export all easily would be nice, but is not equivalent to having the automatic regular backups of all vaults like regular 1P does.

Ben

@prenagha

Have you added a 1Password for Teams account to your 1Password client? With Teams "export" is a permission that can be explicitly granted/denied on per-person, per-vault basis. If you do not have export permissions to one of the vaults you have in 1Password then that could explain the behavior you are seeing.

Also I don't disagree that an automatic process is preferable, I think Brenty was making the point that we don't lock you in. So long as your administrator allows (in the case of Teams) you can export all of your data to plain text if you really want.

That said we've received a fair amount of feedback about the desire for the ability to create regular local backups, and that is something we're looking into.

Thanks!

Ben

prenagha

Yes 1P is connected to my Family account
Using Family not Teams
Don't recall the granular "Export" permission setting, is that something I can set
My account is the Family owner/admin

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loconut

Export is also disabled for me and I supposedly have "Full Access" in admin. My wife is listed as read, write & export, but I haven't tried exporting from her account mainly because its a hassle since she mostly uses an iPad and its not set up on her desktop.

As far as using AWS goes... they're fantastic, but not infallible. Mostly though, it's still got a human running the admin panel where someone can delete a snapshot, whatever. AWS has gotten better from its early days, but once upon a time VMs would just vanish. I use AWS for my own sites and take regular snapshots and copy them to another AZ, but at the end of the day there's still a few places I can screw it up.

If the data's live, things like viruses/malware/BOFH administrators can delete it. If the data's backed up, processes fail.

Long story short, I'd be just peachy if export worked and it sounds like that's maybe a bug and in which case once fixed, my complaints go away. :)

That said, if we're can ask for candy.. I'd love to have the auto backup files and a dropbox synced copy of my personal + shared vault in addition to the export.

I'll close by saying 1Password is great. I wish I'd started with it instead of LastPass. I'm mostly just being grumpy about something new that you guys are working hard on!

Ben

Thanks for the feedback everyone!

With Families everyone should have export access. The granular permissions are a Teams-only feature. If you've converted a Team to a Families account that may be the difficulty... If you are unable to export from your Families vault please drop us an email (to support@1password.com, from the email address that was used to create the account) with a link to this thread ( https://discussions.agilebits.com/discussion/59098 ). Please also include your username for these forums in the email so that we can 'connect the dots.'

As I mentioned we've received a fair amount of feedback about backups with Teams / Families and are looking into how to best handle local backups going forward. I don't have anything to announce at this point, though.

Thanks!

Ben

AGAlumB

You can also export to 1PIF (which is an open, JSON-based format) or CSV at any time.

But than I have to find a save place to backup my unencrypted passwords. For most users even deleting that file safely would be a technical problem. That can't be a good recommendation for a backup solution.
Personally, I would like to see the ability to have local encrypted backups of my family vaults similar to the "normal" vaults.

@dahanbn: That suggestion wasn't for backup; it's for exporting data.

Personally, I would like to see the ability to have local encrypted backups of my family vaults similar to the "normal" vaults.

As I mentioned a few times already, this is how you can continue to backup your 1Password vaults locally in the traditional way:

But keep in mind that you can also copy data to a local vault periodically and back that up as well.

So for example you have a 1Password for Teams/Families vault, you copy its contents to a local (non-Teams/Families) vault, and at that point you can either backup manually, or let 1Password perform its automatic backups.

We don't have this type of backup process with 1Password for Teams/Families because the server is the source of truth: if you try to "restore" data in place, the server's copy "wins" (because it will always be more current). I hope that helps clear things up! :)

prenagha

The idea that the server is always right no matter what is complete nonsense. There is an endless list of technical, business and personal catastrophes that could lead the server data to be absent or incorrect. So smart users like us want an automatic local backup (without us making a mess and continually copying items). Like we have had for years with regular 1p. If you will do that great. If not that's disappointing.
But please stop trying to convince us we don't need it.

AGAlumB

So smart users like us want an automatic local backup (without us making a mess and continually copying items). Like we have had for years with regular 1p. If you will do that great. If not that's disappointing. But please stop trying to convince us we don't need it.

@prenagha: I'm not. You have it. You can continue using 1Password as you're accustomed to, the way you like it. We haven't changed that or taken anything away, only added a new option. If you don't like 1Password for Teams/Families as is, that's fine! We'll continue to iterate and improve it over time. But these are the options as they stand today. That's the only thing I'm trying to convince you of. :)

MortalWombatUK

I agree that local backup would make us all much happier. The Cloud is only "right" if human error/negligence/crime hasn't made it wrong somehow. Local, encrypted backup must really be an option.

Ben

Thanks for the feedback, @MortalWombatUK!

Ben

XIII

How can one restore such a server side backup? And can one pick a specific date? With what retention?

tastyroadkill

Please add me to the list of those who must have local backups. In fact, that's a showstopper for me. I won't switch to Families unless there is a way to run and control local backups, both automatically and manually.

I moved to 1Password last year because I did not like the Lastpass model. I'm disappointed to see 1Password moving in the direction of Lastpass.

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Ben

@tastyroadkill

Thanks for the feedback! To be clear, we're not forcing anyone into Families/Teams. We still license our standalone products as we always have. Families/Teams is an additional option, not a replacement.

Thanks for the vote @dahanbn.

@XIII

We do not have an interface for that implemented yet, but it is something we're working on.

rcampbel

I would also like to see local backup of Family/Team vaults. I have had an experience with an AWS based company that resulted in loss of all of our data. The site was hacked and the hacker got AWS admin control and deleted all data and all backups. They had no offline backups so they were unable to recover any data and the site went out of business. Had I not had local copies of the data, all would have been lost.

I really like the direction you are going with Family/Teams and I know you still have work to do, but here is my list of items that are still needed:

1. Local Backup/Restore of individual/all family/team vaults to a local folder. Since vaults are just an encrypted blob on the server, I wouldn't think this would be too hard.
2. Ability to move items seemlessly to/from a family/team vault and a personal vault. Currently documents are lost when going back to a personal vault, so we either need the ability to convert documents back to attachments, or even better, the ability to convert personal vaults to the same format as family/team vaults.
3. Ability to convert items to different types. This is slightly off topic, but is a real pain as I'm trying to move to family and sharing and need to reformat data to make it more palatable to share. For example, I have secure notes with server info that I want to convert to Server items. The only way to do it now is to open both a 1Password app and web interface and copy/paste.

As a software developer myself, I understand the challenges with prioritizing and implementing the long list of requirements that a successful product generates. Keep up the good work and I look forward to your continued enhancements.

Ben

Thanks very much for the feedback @rcampbel!

Ben

Curt Grimes

I think today's hours-long outage reiterates the need for local backups.