1Password Acquires Kolide, Aiming to Enhance Device Security

1Password announced the acquisition of a leading device security and access management organization as part of an effort to better protect remote and hybrid workers.

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Often considered one of the most popular password managers, 1Password provides identity security solutions to over 100,000 businesses and millions of customers worldwide. CEO Jeff Shiner said in a statement Monday that the acquisition “will help businesses of all sizes close gaps in their security posture and achieve Zero Trust access objectives.”

“We’ve witnessed a historic transformation of the workplace that demands transformative and intuitive new security solutions,” Shiner said.

Massachusetts-based Kolide, which provides access management solutions to organizations such as Discord, Robinhood and Databricks, will join 1Password “as a fully intact team,” according to a blog post published Monday by CEO Jason Meller. The company was founded in 2016 and delivers security alerts for Mac, Windows and Linux devices through platforms such as Slack and personalized privacy centers.

Meller, who joins 1Password as its vice president of product, said Kolide will remain available as a stand-alone product, and most of its offerings will “feel essentially the same” in the near term. He added that the acquisition will help “with future improvements to features and options for [single sign-on] integration,” as well as plans to work on projects surrounding “user-first security.”

Kolide is 1Password’s third acquisition since 2021. The company purchased the Dutch cybersecurity firm SecretHub in April 2021 and acquired Passage, a leading modern authentication service, in November 2022.

1Password has spent the last several years rebuilding its client apps from scratch to accelerate the rollout of new features simultaneously to Mac, Windows, Android, iOS and Linux environments.

“Making the safe thing the easy thing is a very difficult thing to do,” Adam Caudill, a security architect for 1Password, told Information Security Media Group in 2022. “It is a substantial technical challenge. And that’s something that we’ve been investing in for years.”

1Password’s announcement says the increasingly hybrid modern workforce “is here to stay.” It says Kolide’s 2023 Shadow IT Report shows that 47% of companies allowed potentially vulnerable, unmanaged devices to access company resources.

“Businesses need to ensure that they trust the right device attempting to access company applications,” the announcement says. “This requires assessing the security context of every sign-on and device to determine in real time whether to grant access to the application.”