Cloudflare Acquires Passwordless Startup To Boost SASE Platform

The company says the acquisition of BastionZero will enable Cloudflare to introduce ‘zero trust’ infrastructure access to its secure access service edge platform.

Cloudflare announced Thursday that its acquisition of passwordless authentication startup BastionZero will enable it to introduce “zero trust” infrastructure access to its secure access service edge (SASE) platform.

Boston-based BastionZero was founded in 2020 by CEO Sharon Goldberg (pictured) and CTO Ethan Heilman — the same year that Cloudflare debuted Cloudflare One, its SASE platform that combines both networking and security capabilities to meet the access needs of distributed organizations.

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BastionZero offers technology to enable “simple” passwordless access to IT infrastructure, according to a news release from Cloudflare.

The technology will now bring zero-trust controls for protecting access to infrastructure — such as servers and Kubernetes clusters as well as modern databases — to the Cloudflare One platform, the company said.

BastionZero has been backed by investors including Dell Technologies Capital, which led the startup’s $6 million seed round in 2022.

CRN has reached out to Cloudflare for comment on how many employees are a part of the BastionZero team.

Meanwhile on Thursday, Cloudflare and CrowdStrike announced an expansion to their partnership that will see Cloudflare One integrated with CrowdStrike’s recently released Falcon Next-Gen SIEM offering.