# Secure MCP credentials with 1Password and Runlayer

DevFeed: [Secure MCP credentials with 1Password and Runlayer](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/secure-mcp-credentials-with-1password-and-runlayer-1958.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://1password.com/blog/secure-mcp-credentials-1password-runlayer>)

Author: info@1password.com (Jeff Malnick)

Published: 2026-03-20T00:00:00Z

Content type: article

Language: en

Sources: [Blog on 1Password Blog](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/blog-on-1password-blog.md>)

Topics: [MSP MCP](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/msp-mcp.md>)

Tags: [agents](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/agents.md>), [ai](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai.md>), [ai-agents](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/ai-agents.md>), [identity](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/identity.md>), [integration](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/integration.md>), [mcp](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/mcp.md>), [policy](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/policy.md>), [security](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/security.md>)

## AI overview

1Password and Runlayer describe an integration that keeps machine credentials in 1Password vaults for MCP platforms, resolves them at runtime, and audits credential fetches and rotations without exposing secrets.

## Source excerpt

We built 1Password® Unified Access to extend identity security beyond humans to the agents and machine workloads operating across your business. In practice, that means securing not just who gets access, but how agentic systems connect to tools, services, and data. That makes the MCP gateway a critical control point. It sits between AI agents and the systems they need to reach, making it the natural place to enforce policy, visibility, and governance. But in many deployments, it also becomes the place where credentials accumulate, moving secrets out of the vault and into the platform. That is the problem 1Password and Runlayer are solving together. With this integration, enterprises can keep their machine credentials in 1Password, resolve them only at runtime, and audit every fetch and rotation without exposing the secret itself. If your team has adopted an MCP platform to centralize how AI agents access tools, you've probably solved one problem and created another. Before the MCP platform, credentials were scattered across developer machines in plaintext config files: After the MCP platform, those credentials shifted from the developer's laptop into the platform's database. This centralizes them, but still keeps them outside your vault. Exposure on the local machine decreases, while secrets sprawl and operational complexity increase. A better model is to keep these credentials alongside the rest of your secrets, in a system that is consistent, easy to use, and supports self-service for the AI builder. MCP platforms shouldn't become another place for secrets sprawl Enterprises are using hundreds to thousands of upstream server connections like GitHub, Slack, Notion, Linear, and internal APIs. Each server needs at least one credential. When those credentials live outside the vault: A platform compromise exposes every MCP server token at once. There's no single source of truth for who changed what credential and when. Enforcement of credential access policies lives ou