Bitwarden acquires Passwordless.dev to help companies authenticate users without a password • businessroundups.org

Open source password management platform Bitwarden has made its first known acquisition and has named a young Swedish-based startup Passwordless.devthat specializes in helping developers integrate passwordless authentication technology into their software.

The news comes shortly after 1Password and LastPass rival Bitwarden announced their first outside funding since launching in 2015, securing $100 million from PSG and Battery Ventures. The company also announced at the time that it had won a previously undisclosed Serie A round in 2019.

The password problem

Like other password management services, Bitwarden is designed to make it easier for individuals and businesses to automatically create hard-to-guess passwords and store them all in a secure vault. It’s about helping people not reuse the same predictable password for all of their online services. However, Bitwarden’s main selling point is that it’s open source – or at least the source is available, meaning it promises full transparency in the codebase, while also allowing the community to contribute and add new features. help develop.

Now Bitwarden wants to capitalize on a burgeoning online security trend, one that wants to consign passwords to the history books – after all, compromised passwords are responsible for most corporate security breaches.

Indeed, there has been a concerted push toward passwordless authentication across the technology landscape. Last year, Apple, Google, and Microsoft teamed up to support a new passwordless login standard called WebAuthnwhile separately, Apple introduced a new feature called Passkey that allows people to use their Apple device to log into online services without passwords.

Elsewhere on passwordless startups like HyperMagic and Stytch have raised VC dollars to bolster their respective efforts.

In turn, Bitwarden already offers some support for passwordless authentication, such as biometric logins for Bitwarden’s own apps, while also supporting physical two-factor authentication (2FA) security keys such as YubiKey. But by taking Passwordless.dev under its wing, Bitwarden aims to make it easier for developers to build native biometric sign-in smarts into their software, while allowing companies to modernize their existing applications that currently rely on passwords.

Founded in Sweden in 2020, Passwordless.dev has largely flown under the radar since its inception. But the company offers APIs built on WebAuthn, a web standard developed by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to support secure password login. Passwordless.dev essentially makes it easier for developers to bring WebAuthn to software with a few lines of code, reducing much of the cost and complexity associated with introducing passwordless authentication into software.

As of today, Bitwarden has launched a new beta service called Passwordless.dev by Bitwarden, which allows any third-party developer to integrate biometric login technology such as Touch ID, Face ID, and Windows Hello into their apps.

“This saves weeks of coding DIY passkey implementations,” Bitwarden CEO Michael Crandell explained to businessroundups.org in an email. “Enterprises also have business applications that still rely on passwords for authentication and want to provide users with passwordless experiences. Bitwarden Passwordless.dev helps them quickly add WebAuthn and passwordless authentication features to these applications.”

Bitwarden’s Passwordless.dev will be free during its first beta period in Q1 2023, after which the company said it will offer paid plans that cover certain usage levels and features.

While Bitwarden isn’t disclosing how much it paid for the startup or how many employees it’s taking on as part of the deal, it did confirm that Passwordless.dev hasn’t raised any outside funding in its more than two years of existence, meaning it probably didn’t break the bank for the acquisition.

Bitwarden also confirmed to businessroundups.org that Passwordless.dev will continue to be offered to developers independently of other Bitwarden products.