Secure developer secrets with 1Password

No developer wants to be responsible for causing a catastrophic breach. But security best practices are often incompatible with the expectation that developers constantly write and ship code, and that velocity is massively accelerating thanks to AI adoption. Developers trying to work fast need convenience, but the easiest place to put a developer secret can sometimes be the riskiest place to leave it. For many developers, that place is a local .env file: fast, familiar, and supported by the tools they already use, but often stored in plaintext on disk. Even when developers are given discrete tools for managing secrets, they can be complex, time-consuming, and disconnected from their workflows. So when someone needs to get an app up and running, the fastest path can be the familiar path: put a credential in a plaintext file on your local disk.

These habits create a visibility gap for IT and security leaders and contribute to secret sprawl. GitGuardian’s 2026 State of Secrets Sprawl report found 28.65 million new secrets in public GitHub commits in 2025, up 34% from the previous year. The same report found the number of leaked secrets for AI services had grown by 81% in a single year.

When credentials are stored in plaintext on a local device, IT and security teams may not know they exist, which means they cannot monitor them, revoke them, rotate them, or understand what else depends on them.

That is the gap 1Password is closing with the launch of 1Password Environments and Developer Watchtower: helping teams find improperly stored developer credentials, secure them in the place employees already trust, and let developers keep using them without slowing down the work.

• Developer Watchtower identifies plaintext developer credentials on local devices and guides users to import them into 1Password.
• Developer credential visibility for admins provides a clearer view of credential risk across their organization, with reporting and remediation workflows to help employees secure…