A French-American startup launched an automatic password changer in an attempt to remove the all-too-human frailty that has rendered the phrase “computer security” a worrying oxymoron, leading a rival US software firm to launch a similar service.
For most people, properly managing passwords verges on impossible, given the dizzying array of devices and Web sites on which users have become increasingly reliant. However, Dashlane.com and LastPass are stepping up their offerings to counter computer criminals.
Dashlane, which was founded in Paris and is now based in New York, said on Tuesday that it has acquired PassOmatic, a startup that created the automatic password changer it is building into its own products in coming weeks. The deal’s terms were not disclosed.
In response, LastPass, a competing supplier of password management software, said it now offers an automatic password changing feature of its own. The feature is available when LastPass users visit more than 75 supported sites, including Facebook, Twitter and Amazon.com.
“With a click, LastPass’ patent-pending technology launches a Web site and logs in for you, then automatically changes your password,” the Fairfax, Virginia-based company said in a statement.
Dozens of similarly featured programs exist, with LastPass, Dashlane and RoboForm among the most popular across both computer and phone systems. Each helps users store and organize passwords in a secure database controlled by a master password.
However, by offering a way to change passwords regularly with just a few clicks, the latest approach marks a breakthrough in an industry that typically entreats users to create complex strings of text and numbers — a request that largely goes unheeded.
“The key is to have reasonably complicated passwords that are different on every Web site,” Dashlane chief executive Emmanuel Schalit said in a telephone interview.
Dashlane says the feature will update passwords automatically at predetermined intervals — every 30 days, for example, or at the user’s request if a Web site’s security has been compromised.
“We are making passwords go away from the perspective of the consumer, without doing away with passwords from a technical perspective,” Schalit said.
Though some cybersecurity experts have said passwords will eventually be replaced by other forms of identification, such as fingerprints, the prospect of passwords disappearing completely remains a long way off, and Dashlane has, in effect, found a way to manage a user’s digital identity across the Web.
The LastPass password changer makes password changes locally on a specific user device, the advantage of which is that only the user has access to passwords, the company said.
Dashlane was founded in Paris five years ago by three engineers backed by Bernard Liautaud, the French entrepreneur who started Business Objects, the data analysis software company acquired by SAP SE for US$6.8 billion in 2007.
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