Bitwarden acquires Passwordless.dev to assist corporations authenticate customers with out passwords

Open supply password administration platform Bitwarden has made its first recognized acquisition, snapping up a fledgling Sweden-based startup known as Passwordless.dev, which makes a speciality of serving to builders combine passwordless authentication know-how into their software program.

The information comes shortly after 1Password and LastPass rival Bitwarden announced its first outside funding since its inception in 2015, securing $100 million from PSG and Battery Ventures. The corporate additionally revealed on the time that it had raised a beforehand undisclosed Collection A spherical in 2019.

The password drawback

Much like different password administration providers, Bitwarden is designed to make it simpler for people and enterprises to mechanically create hard-to-guess passwords, and retailer all of them in a safe vault. It’s all about serving to folks to not re-use the identical predictable password throughout all their on-line providers. Bitwarden’s key promoting level, although, is that it’s open supply — or, no less than, it’s supply obtainable, which means that it guarantees full transparency into the codebase, whereas additionally permitting the group to contribute and assist develop new options.

Now, Bitwarden is seeking to capitalize on a burgeoning pattern within the on-line safety sphere, one that’s seeking to consign passwords to the historical past books — compromised passwords, in any case, are responsible for most business security breaches.

Certainly, there was a concerted push towards passwordless authentication throughout the know-how panorama. Final yr, Apple, Google and Microsoft partnered in assist of a brand new password-free sign-in commonplace known as WebAuthn, whereas individually Apple introduced a new feature called Passkey that enables folks to make use of their Apple machine to log in to on-line providers with out passwords.

Elsewhere, passwordless-focused startups such as Hypr, Magic and Stytch have attracted VC {dollars} to bolster their respective efforts.

Bitwarden, for its half, already presents some assist for passwordless authentication, such as biometric logins for Bitwarden’s own apps, whereas it additionally helps bodily two-factor authentication (2FA) safety keys resembling YubiKey. However by bringing Passwordless.dev beneath its wing, Bitwarden desires to make it simpler for builders to bake native biometric sign-in smarts into their software program, whereas permitting enterprises to modernize their present functions that at the moment depend on passwords.

Based out of Sweden in 2020, Passwordless.dev has largely flown beneath the radar since its inception. However the firm offers APIs built on WebAuthn, an online commonplace developed by the FIDO Alliance and the World Extensive Internet Consortium (W3C) to assist safe password logins. Passwordless.dev primarily makes it simpler for builders to deliver WebAuthn to software program with a couple of traces of code, decreasing lots of the prices and complexities concerned in introducing passwordless authentication to software program.

From right this moment, Bitwarden has launched a brand new beta service known as Passwordless.dev by Bitwarden, which permits any third-party developer to embed biometric sign-in know-how resembling Contact ID, Face ID and Home windows Hey into their apps.

“This protects weeks of coding do-it-yourself passkey implementations,” Bitwarden CEO Michael Crandell defined to in an e mail. “Enterprises even have enterprise functions that also depend on passwords for authentication and need to present customers with passwordless experiences. Bitwarden Passwordless.dev helps them rapidly add WebAuthn and passwordless authentication options into these functions.”

Passwordless.dev by Bitwarden will probably be free via its preliminary beta interval in Q1 2023, after which the corporate stated it can provide paid plans that cowl sure ranges of utilization and options.

Whereas Bitwarden isn’t disclosing how a lot it paid for the startup or what number of workers it’s taking up as a part of the deal, it did verify that Passwordless.dev hasn’t raised any exterior funding in its two-plus years in existence, which means it possible didn’t break the financial institution for the acquisition.

Bitwarden additionally confirmed to that Passwordless.dev will proceed to be supplied to builders independently of different Bitwarden merchandise.