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

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

Simply in the present day, open-source password supervisor Bitwarden introduced that it has acquired a $100 million funding from PSG, a progress fairness agency, with participation from Battery Ventures, highlighting that password administration nonetheless has an integral position 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 might 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 more customers battle to handle their on-line passwords, with analysis exhibiting that 39% of Individuals report experiencing a excessive stage of password fatigue. 

That is unsurprising when contemplating the excessive quantity of accounts that customers juggle. In truth, 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. 

Consequently, 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 an especially punishing risk panorama. 

Analysis reveals that 81% of corporations throughout the FTSE 100 had at the 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 risk panorama by 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 develop into 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 identification theft,” Crandell stated. 

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

A take a look at the password administration market 

Bitwarden is without doubt one of the largest suppliers within the password administration world market, which researchers anticipate will attain a price 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 house, together with LastPass, which presents a password administration instrument 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 12 months 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 12 months, 1Password closed a $620 million sequence C funding spherical and achieved a valuation of $6.8 billion. 

The important thing differentiation between Bitwarden and different opponents isn’t solely is it open supply, however it presents 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.