Passwords aren’t useless but. Bitwarden raises $100M for password administration

Are passwords useless? With many distributors like Microsoft, Apple and Google shifting towards passwordless authentication choices alongside the FIDO Alliance and credential-based assaults on the rise, you’d be forgiven for considering that passwords are on the way in which out, however login credentials aren’t finished simply but. 

Simply right this moment, open-source password supervisor Bitwarden introduced that it has obtained a $100 million funding from PSG, a development fairness agency, with participation from Battery Ventures, highlighting that password management nonetheless has an integral function to play in enterprise and shopper safety for the foreseeable future. 

For enterprises, the funding highlights that whereas passwordless authentication choices are rising in quantity, enhanced password administration may nonetheless present an efficient reply to the onslaught of credential theft and phishing emails.  

The state of passwords in 2022 

The announcement comes as increasingly customers wrestle to handle their on-line passwords, with research displaying that 39% of People report experiencing a excessive degree of password fatigue. 

That is unsurprising when contemplating the excessive quantity of accounts that customers juggle. Actually, NordPass estimates that every particular person must handle 80-100 passwords, making it mentally exhausting to create sturdy and distinctive passwords for every on-line account. 

Because of this, many customers resort to reusing credentials and choosing weaker passwords to make it simpler to log in to their on-line accounts. This inevitably makes it simpler for cybercriminals to conduct account takeover makes an attempt in a particularly punishing menace panorama. 

Analysis reveals that 81% of corporations inside the FTSE 100 had at the very least one credential compromised and uncovered on the darkish net, with a complete of 31,135 stolen and leaked credentials detected for these corporations. 

Password administration vs. credential theft 

Whereas some suppliers are responding to this menace panorama by taking a look at eliminating login credentials altogether, organizations like Bitwarden stay decided that higher password administration holds the reply to defending customers from a lot of these threats. 

“Password administration has turn out to be a required a part of each firm’s safety stack,” stated Michael Crandell, CEO at Bitwarden.

“Bitwarden helps corporations and people keep protected with sturdy and distinctive passwords for all their on-line accounts. This helps companies keep away from breaches and ransomware, and helps people keep away from id theft,” Crandell stated. 

In observe, Bitwarden gives customers with a digital area to retailer their passwords, alongside options like credential autofill, computerized password technology and password power scoring, to assist handle the safety of their passwords extra successfully at scale to scale back fatigue. 

A have a look at the password administration market 

Bitwarden is likely one of the largest suppliers within the password administration global market, which researchers anticipate will attain a worth of $2.9 billion by 2027, as extra customers and organizations try and handle passwords extra proactively. 

The group is competing towards some established opponents within the area, together with LastPass, which gives a password administration device which you can log in to password-free by way of the LastPass Authenticator, and use a built-in generator to create sturdy passwords. 

LastPass was spun out by Elliott Administration’s non-public fairness agency and Francesco Companions final yr for $4.3 billion. 

One other key competitor is 1Password, a supplier providing one-click login to websites, password-generation capabilities, and an insights dashboard the place customers can monitor password well being. Earlier this yr, 1Password closed a $620 million series C funding round and achieved a valuation of $6.8 billion. 

The important thing differentiation between Bitwarden and different opponents shouldn’t be solely is it open supply, nevertheless it gives a free password supervisor for limitless logins and units that may be be deployed within the cloud or by way of a self-hosted setup to make sure that organizations can meet exterior compliance necessities.