Password manager 1Password has acquired Passage—a company focused on wiping out passwords as a form of authentication.
Posting on the 1Password blog, CEO Jeff Shiner explained how the decision to acquire Passage was so that 1Password could "drastically shorten the adoption curve for passkeys so we can bring a seamless, secure, and interoperable passwordless experience to you sooner."
Passkeys are a more secure alternative to relying on passwords, and there's a good chance you're already using them on your devices. FaceID, TouchID, Windows Hello, and the Android fingerprint reader all produce passkeys for authentication.
Whenever you provide your face or fingerprint for a security challenge, your biometric data generates a cryptographic signature which is then used for authentication without your biometric data ever leaving your device. This is essentially how a passkey is formed.
By acquiring Passage, 1Password aims to replace the need for companies to build their own passkey implementation and instead rely on 1Password. Over the next few months, Shiner says "we’ll be rolling out a comprehensive, end-to-end solution for passwordless authentication, beginning with full support for creating, saving, and using device-agnostic passkeys in 1Password during the first half of 2023."
Cole Hecht, CEO of Passage, explained how the acquisition came about following a week-long hackathon with the 1Password team where the challenge was to make passwordless authentication more widely accessible. The two teams are now joining forces so passkeys can "gain a foothold" and it becomes "significantly easier for companies to implement a secure, passwordless authentication flow into their products."