SecureW2 Secures $80M Funding from Insight Partners to Boost Passwordless Authentication Technology
Passwordless authentication offers numerous advantages over traditional pins, passphrases, and passcodes. According to surveys, compromised passwords are responsible for an estimated 81% of all breaches, and the average person tends to reuse passwords up to 14 times. This practice provides hackers with a significant entry point into an individual’s digital presence if they manage to crack the code just once.
Despite its enhanced security, passwordless technology faces adoption barriers, particularly within the enterprise sector. A 2021 Harris Poll study revealed that 48% of companies had not yet implemented passwordless authentication, citing a lack of the necessary skills and teams as a significant hindrance.
This scenario benefits platforms like SecureW2, which have made it their business to simplify the deployment and maintenance of infrastructure for passwordless authentication. For instance, SecureW2 recently announced its successful fundraising of $80 million from Insight Partners, marking its first-ever funding round.
Max Wolff, a principal at Insight Partners, who also recently led a substantial investment in passwordless security vendor Transmit Security, emphasized that SecureW2’s growing customer base played a pivotal role in this investment. He stated, “Organizations are increasingly looking for alternatives to traditional passwords to authenticate access to networks and applications. SecureW2 provides an easy-to-use, cloud-native solution to address this need that’s already being used by hundreds of customers worldwide.”
SecureW2, based in Seattle, initially began as an open-source project designed to facilitate the connection of Windows devices to wired and wireless network infrastructure for IT departments with “non-Windows” identity environments. The project’s founders, Tom Rixom and Bert Kashyap, were driven by the rising frequency of password-based attacks and the unattractiveness of existing enterprise passwordless authentication solutions.
Bert Kashyap, CEO of SecureW2, explained the company’s journey, stating, “It became clear to us that there was a need for a fresh software-as-a-service-based and low-friction approach for IT teams.”
Over time, SecureW2 has evolved into a comprehensive provider of passwordless technologies, including a tool for issuing certificates (digital replacements for passwords) to grant access to Wi-Fi, Ethernet, or VPN services. SecureW2’s platform is compatible with most mobile and desktop operating systems and can integrate with cloud identity environments like Okta, extending policy-based security throughout an organization’s infrastructure.
Kashyap added, “From business and government organizations to colleges and school districts, password-based connectivity to network infrastructure leads to potential disconnects due to password rotation procedures. Eliminating user frustration and productivity loss not only offers a direct return on investment but also enhances security by ensuring that passwords used to access other apps and resources remain uncompromised.”
SecureW2, with nearly a thousand customers and “millions” of users, had been self-funded and profitable with free cash flow until this funding round. The decision to seek funding was driven by two primary goals: expanding its go-to-market efforts and boosting software development and research and development in areas related to SecureW2’s domain.
Kashyap outlined the company’s plans, “We’ve historically used machine learning to understand and predict how devices are connecting to infrastructure environments, and we have plans to expose some of these elements directly to the customer so that they may benefit from security anomaly detection, capacity planning, and more. As awareness grows of the need for a passwordless approach in both corporate environments and non-corporate infrastructure, we’re providing simple and cost-competitive solutions to drive adoption and growth.”
Currently employing 70 individuals, SecureW2 anticipates ending the year with approximately 80 employees.
