Does the increasing frequency of data breaches make you feel uncomfortable? If the big companies can’t protect themselves from hackers, how can you? I got the answer for you with 1Password. If you become a 1Password customer you won’t have to worry about password protection again. Your consumer and corporate level passwords and account data will be under virtual lock and key with 1Password. Let me explain how 1Password works and why all of us here and Walnut St. Labs choose to use it.
- If you use 1Password your data is safe: 1Password encrypts all the data in your “vault” in a fundamentally different way than any other password management service. Their dual-key encryption makes sure a breach of 1Password’s systems would not allow hackers access to any sensitive user data. Many password managers brag about how they’ve never been breached or their systems are “unhackable” but in truth no one is “unhackable.” The future of data security lies in password encryption and 1Password is the best at that.
- 1Password encrypts important metadata to protect your privacy: As you’ve read above, anything a user keeps in their “vault” is encrypted but 1Password works hard to also encrypt a lot of other sensitive user data. For example, they encrypt vault names, vault website urls, and other data that would give the hacker more information on the type of vault they’re trying to access. What I mean by this is, imagine someone breached a bank vault but then none of the deposit boxes were labeled and all the lights were turned off- that’s what 1Password accomplishes by encrypting data the user wouldn’t even think to protect. The “virtual bank robber” aka the hacker would have no way of knowing if the vault they’re cracking contains credit card numbers or cooking recipes.
- Don’t only take my word for it: If at the end of this blog you’re still skeptical about using 1password please be sure to take a look around online and see how many people endorse it! Community leaders, politicians, scientists, marketers- basically in every sector of the economy you can think of there are plenty of people who put their trust in 1Password to protect their sensitive data. 1Password invests heavily in being a good pillar in the security community and consistently involves third-party researchers in the regular testing of its processes. 1Password has the largest bug bounty in the industry and is ready to discover and repair vulnerabilities before they can impact you!
Now before I leave you with a 1Password sign up link, I want to take the time to explain how 1Password dual-key encryption works. It helps to think of the analogy I brought up before, the bank. Think of your password management software like your safety deposit box: a secure container to put your secret things in, stored in an expertly protected bank, and locked with a key (your account password). If someone breaks into the bank, they can steal the box and pick the lock. Or they could even steal the key and open the box even faster. 1Password removes both these possibilities from occurring through dual-key encryption. Every user at 1Password actually has two passwords, two “keys” to their virtual safety deposit box.
- The first key is your account password that you choose. The one you typed out and decided on, this is the password you personally use to access your vaults.
- The second key, a 1Password invention, is called the Secret Key. It’s a 128-bit, machine-genrated secret code that’s mathematically impossible to crack.
All other password management software companies rely only on the first key to protect your passwords and other sensitive information. 1Password is built differently. With the addition of the second key they confidently claim that it would take hackers trillions of years while using the most powerful mathematical computing software to decrypt and crack their dual-key approach. This is not going overboard, this is what is required to protect your data in 2023. 1Password makes a promise to consumers that their data will never fall into the wrong hands. Everyone here at Walnut St. Labs uses 1Password for their password protection and you should too!