Nowadays when many of us have all our important accounts — both work and personal ones — in one place, it has become more common to reuse passwords across multiple sites. Santa Barbara-based Bitwarden wants to make individuals and enterprises less vulnerable to password theft.
The company announced a $100 million growth investment from PSG to enhance its password management solution. Battery Ventures also participated in the round.
Bitwarden offers an open-source solution that allows users to safely store sensitive data on any device. The platform offers features including credential autofill, password generation, password strength scoring as well as secure credential and file sharing. For enterprises, the platform offers a choice between cloud and self-hosted deployment. Bitwarden currently counts tens of thousands of businesses and millions of end users as customers.
“By taking a differentiated approach to password management — one that serves individuals and business, one that stands by open-source, one that makes a fully featured free version available to the world — I believe Bitwarden has leapt ahead in the market,” Michael Crandell, Bitwarden’s CEO, said in a statement. “The timing of the investment is ideal, as we expand into opportunities in developer secrets, passwordless technologies and authentication.”
The company is working to build out these tools and features during a time when digitally-active individuals create, manage and remember dozens of online credentials, according to the company.
The issue of password reuse has exposed enterprises to the impacts of poor credential hygiene, including more frequent cyber attacks. As these attacks occur, they can lead to larger issues like identity theft and financial fraud. Bitwarden aims to keep its users safe against phishing attacks and password threats.
“In our view, Bitwarden distinguishes itself among the available alternatives by virtue of its open-source architecture, flexible deployment options and zero-cost offering which millions of individuals have utilized,” Tom Reardon, a managing director at PSG, said in a statement. “These unique attributes remain unchanged, and we look forward to helping the team bring this solution and the next generation of password management tools to a broader group of customers.”
