Intel acquires password management startup, PasswordBox to bolster security arm

Intel had acquired a password management start up in a bid to boost its nett security business.

CNET reported Montreal-based PasswordBox would form part of Intel Security, a branch of the chipmaker that focused on internet security, according to the blogpost of the startup. The deal's financial terms were not revealed.

With PasswordBox, users can store log-in credentials to websites and apps in a secure repository and log in to sites without having to manually type in passwords. The application would also help users to secure passwords without being forced to remember them. Launched in June 2013, PasswordBox had grown fairly quickly, and had amassed 14 million downloads over the last year and a half.

Security software had emerged as a key component in the chipmaker's business after its acquisition of security firm McAfee in 2011. Intel dropped the McAfee name, earlier from its suite of security products -- including security software for computers, the clound and servers -- and rebranded them as Intel Security.

PasswordBox provided little information on Intel's plans, and according to the start up now it would ''remain available as is" adding that that it had much in store for the "next few months." Intel Security was offering PasswordBox's premium subscription service, which earlier went for $12 per year, for free to all new and existing customers until the "release of a new product."

According to the Santa Clara, California-based chipmaker, PasswordBox would become part of the Safe Identity organisation within Intel Security Group that was focused on simplifying and strengthening security with the delivery of ideas that reduced the pain of having to memorise dozens of passwords, Reuters reported.

According to the tech security company's co-founder and chief executive Daniel Robichaud his goal is to get to a billion users.

Reuters quoted Robichaud as saying in a phone interview that the company had grown really fast in the last 18 months faster than Dropbox and Evernote when they started, and teaming with Intel was its way of getting faster to a billion users.

The company last year raised $6 million in a Series A venture funding round led by OMERS Ventures, the venture capital arm of Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, one of Canada's largest pension funds with over C$65 billion ($57.40 billion) in net assets.