Dashlane can now track employees’ password health over time

Password management platform Dashlane is introducing a new tool that gives businesses historical perspective on the health of their employees’ passwords.

The launch comes as a record number of people are working from home, a trend that was in the making before the COVID-19 crisis boosted momentum. Having more people working remotely increases the risk of bad actors gaining access to a company’s systems through insecure home networks. Indeed, poor password hygiene is a major driving force behind security breaches, with 81% of all breaches attributed to compromised passwords.

While Dashlane has been largely consumer-focused since its inception in 2009, the New York-based company branched out with the launch of Dashlane Business back in 2016. Dashlane raised $110 million last year, largely to bolster its burgeoning business customer base of around 20,000 paying companies.

Healthy passwords

Dashlane Business pricing plans range from $5-$8 per user per month and offer a range of features. Given that individuals inside companies are typically responsible for setting passwords for their various accounts, Dashlane’s latest tool gives IT admins greater insight into password hygiene across the company, with a particular focus on how it has improved (or worsened) over time. The tool is able to assess password strength without revealing the password to any third parties — adhering to “zero knowledge” principles.

While Dashlane’s business offering already included various password health metrics, it’s now easier to see how internal campaigns, policies, and tactics are impacting individual and companywide password health over time. It’s also possible to benchmark a company’s performance against the industry standard.

Other useful features include “compromised passwords,” which surfaces any online services a company is using that have been breached and whose passwords have been made public.

With a broad historical perspective, admins can drill down into password health at an individual level and ask specific employees to strengthen their passwords.

Dashlane Business plans also come with free premium personal accounts, meaning employees can use Dashlane for all their online services, such as Facebook, Netflix, and Uber. This is where the password health tool could prove particularly useful, as it will surface instances in which people have reused passwords across their personal and working environments.

Security

Password security has emerged as a key focus for many technology companies — Dropbox recently launched a password management tool, for example, while Google introduced a password checkup Chrome extension that it later baked into several of its existing products. Dashlane rival 1Password raised $200 million last November to boost its own ambitions in the enterprise. And a few months back, 1Password announced a new integration with the Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) password breach database to power a new breach report service for its business customers.

Dashlane’s new password health dashboard is available for business customers from today, and the reports will be based on data going back to May 2020.