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How to avoid domain breaches by using 1Password

It's rare that a week goes by without at least one news story popping up about a data breach. Many of these incidents won't affect you or your employer, but it's sensible and understandable to ask the question: what can I do to avoid these kinds of breaches altogether, and protect the domains I own or manage?


Let's say you create an account for a hot new app. Ultimately, you can't control how the developer stores and secures your email address and password. But all is not lost. With 1Password, you can create strong, unique usernames and passwords that minimize the impact of any potential data breach that affects a service you've signed up for.

What is a domain breach?

A domain breach is any incident that exposes a domain’s email addresses or any other information tied to the domain, like usernames, passwords, and credit card details. If a breach has occurred, it means someone – possibly an outside intruder – has accessed confidential information without permission.

How to minimize potential damage from domain breaches

You can’t control how every app or website handles your username and password. But there’s plenty you can do to minimize the damage of a potential domain breach. Secure yourself by:
  • Using strong, unique passwords for all your accounts. This will ensure that a single breach never gives someone access to all your passwords.
  • Responding quickly to known data breaches. Updating any password affected by a data breach will prevent attackers from using the old one to access your account.
1Password makes it easy to do both on all of your devices and any major web browser.

Use 1Password to create strong and unique passwords for all your accounts

1Password secures your digital life by helping you create, save, and autofill strong, unique passwords for all your accounts. If you use a different password for every app and website, it will limit the potential damage from any single data breach.

Use Watchtower to identify passwords that need changing

1Password’s Watchtower uses the Have I Been Pwned database to monitor your accounts and check if any of your passwords have appeared in known data breaches. You’ll be alerted if something comes up, allowing you to change the associated password before any criminal can do damage with it.
Watchtower goes further by flagging weak or duplicate passwords so you can change them for something strong and unique. It will also identify unsecured websites where the passwords you enter might be easily intercepted, as well as sites that support two-factor authentication. This provides additional awareness and an extra layer of security to your logins.

Creating domain breach reports

With 1Password Teams and 1Password Business, you can create a report to see if a data breach has affected anyone with a company email address. Once you’ve completed the setup process, you’ll be able to:
  • See everyone affected by a specific data breach.
  • See which accounts are vulnerable from a particular email address.
  • Send an automated email notification to the affected team members by selecting “Notify Your Team”.
  • Invite anyone not using 1Password to join your team.

Managing security with Insights

Insights from 1Password gives you a bird’s-eye view of your company’s cybersecurity. It gathers information that’s available in the Team report, domain breach report, and Watchtower reports and organizes it in one easily accessible place.


The Insights dashboard is divided into three sections:

  • Breach checks give you information on data breaches of company-owned domains and a list of suggested actions to mitigate potential damage.

  • Password health uses Watchtower data to identify vaults containing weak, reused, or compromised passwords.

  • Team usage provides information on 1Password usage across your organization. For example, you can see who has or hasn’t been using 1Password to generate strong passwords and who isn’t yet using their employee vault.

Protect your accounts from domain breaches with 1Password

You can’t avoid data breaches entirely. But with 1Password, you can stay secure and reduce how useful any information obtained from a breach is. If you’re using strong and unique passwords for each of your accounts, a hacker who has breached one of them won’t be able to access any others.
If one of your passwords does come up in a domain breach, 1Password will prompt you to take immediate action to ensure the affected account is protected. Once you’ve updated the password, the old one exposed in the breach will be worthless to criminals.
Smart, simple, and secure. Try 1Password today to protect your accounts and everything else that’s important in your digital life.

Try 1Password for free and protect yourself against data breaches by using strong, unique passwords for all your accounts.