Standalone vaults in 1Password 8

Hi @Rayven01, thanks for your comments here. We understand that this is a reasonable concern, and have gone to great lengths to address it. I should note as well that much of the security architecture we use to keep information safe has been in place well before 1Password 8 - and that the majority of users are already using this subscription service.

While members of our security team can speak in detail to some of the more technical aspects of this, here are a few of the safeguards we use for subscription accounts, which provide a greater level of security than you can find just about anywhere:

1. The Secret Key - This is explained more fully in our security white paper, as @soshiito mentioned here, but the short explanation is that if someone were to guess or bruteforce your account password, that still wouldn't be enough to get your data. The Secret Key provides a serious safeguard against this, and the mathematical complexity that it puts in an attacker's path is essentially insurmountable with current attack methods and hardware.

2. Strong privacy and secrecy policies - We don't have access to much information about 1Password users, because we don't want to. This is because we're a privacy-conscious bunch around here, but it also means that, in the event of a hack (and we haven't had one yet!) any information we don't have access to is also information an attacker can't turn against you. And, as has always been the case, your data is encrypted and decrypted locally, on your device. Without the password and secret key that only you have - even we don't have those - it is incredibly difficult for a hacker to do anything with your encrypted data.

3. Following that, we also threat-model against internal attacks, including even the possibility of a malicious database administrator. You can find more about this in the security paper as well.

4. We put our trust in encryption rather than authentication. This is because, in short, "Encryption means that 1Password does not face the kinds of threats a largely authentication-based system would face, and we have used an authentication mechanism that defends against many of the threats faced by many other systems." You can read more about this, if you're interested, in our short guide here: https://support.1password.com/authentication-encryption/

5. We also undergo security audits and pen tests, which you can find here: https://support.1password.com/security-assessments/

In short, we have made 1Password as secure as possible, keep the ability to unlock your data out of our own hands, collect nothing besides what's needed to run the service, and continually test our own security for weaknesses.

While of course you are ultimately the final judge of what's best for your situation, I hope this provides some helpful context for how we do things.

Hi @viking1978 I'm very sorry to hear about this.

It is so strange that even i downgraded my version to 7.7 and i am still not able to see the standalone vault menu on my new mac.

That's a bit unexpected, and I'm not sure why that would happen. I understand that you're currently using KeePassXC, but if you are interested for us to follow up on this I'd be happy to connect you with our specialist Mac team who can investigate further.

While we of course respect your specific needs and your choice about how your data is stored, I'd hate for you to miss out on 1Password (if you want to use it) due to a technical issue. We'd be happy to discuss further and look into this on your behalf!

@maesitos,

The 1Password apps cache your data locally, so even if you were somehow prevented from accessing the 1Password service, that would not result in you losing your data.

Ben

@Maesitos I'm not sure I understand where you're coming from on this one.

Without a standalone license and access to local vaults you are a step away from being potentially cancelled from your own passwords. 1password might be great and have perfect servers but nothing stops them from blocking the access to their app and/or your data.

This isn't true. Even if we were to cancel your subscription (which would stop updates to your data from syncing between devices), your data is cached locally on your device. To be more specific, your data is cached on every individual device where you have installed the 1Password app and logged in.

The unlock (decryption) process also happens entirely locally, which means that we have no ability to stop you from accessing your cached data. All the decryption happens on your devices, which is by design, for your privacy and security. It is entirely in your hands.

That volatile cache will not cut it for someone that has for example a couple million USD worth of cryptocurrency.

Again, I'm not sure I understand the argument here. If someone is using a standalone vault, that is also a "volatile" cache that can be lost if something happens to the device (and, judging by the stories I've heard from folks in the cryptocurrency world, this happens ... kind of a lot).

If they do keep backups of the "volatile cache", that's sensible. But 1Password already provides the ability to do this automatically by syncing your data between devices and instantiating an individual local database on every device where you're using 1Password.

So to recap:

• Even in situations where someone's account is cancelled, the data remains in the user's hands and we have no way to block access to it
• Decryption happens entirely locally
• We don't hold and don't want to hold the keys that are necessary to decrypt your data
• The 1Password.com service provides automatic syncing between devices, which is a form of data resilience

But feel free to let me know if I'm misinterpreting your objection, or there's something we haven't covered. We take your privacy and security very seriously, and have no interest in making you "dependent" - only secure and in control of your data.