OneSpan Acquires Nok Nok Labs For Expanded Push On Passwordless

Nok Nok Labs is a top provider of passwordless software authentication, complementing OneSpan’s hardware authentication keys, OneSpan CTO Ashish Jain tells CRN.

OneSpan announced Thursday it has acquired Nok Nok Labs, a top provider of passwordless software authentication, as the vendor looks to expand its offerings in the passwordless space.

Terms of the deal for Nok Nok Labs, which has 30 employees, were not disclosed.

Nok Nok Labs’ FIDO passwordless software authentication capabilities will complement OneSpan’s hardware authentication keys, OneSpan CTO Ashish Jain told CRN.

While security keys make a lot of sense for authenticating into certain applications or services, such as for banking, “you may not want to use a security key” for logging into a consumer travel booking site, for instance, Jain said.

With the acquisition of Nok Nok Labs, a leading provider of passwordless capabilities on the software side, “that's where this helps us to expand our passwordless portfolio,” he said.

Like OneSpan, Nok Nok Labs was also a founding member of the FIDO Alliance, an organization that’s been central to establishing global standards for passwordless authentication. Other key members have included tech giants such as Apple, Google and Microsoft, which have embraced the deployment of passkeys in recent years.

With important passwordless standards now in place, “I believe, as an industry, we are in a pivotal moment,” Jain said. “We are at a point where it is more around deployment and implementation, and not just about creating the standard.”

Nok Nok Labs has also achieved an impressive list of customers since its founding in 2011, Jain said. Key customers for the company include Verizon and Intuit.

Ultimately, with the acquisition of Nok Nok, “we felt like this is the right time for us to lead the industry — and show the right way to implement [passwordless] with both hardware and software,” Jain said. “Nok Nok allows us to complete that story and allow us to become that one-stop shop for your authentication needs — whether for workforce, employee-based use cases, or for consumer.”

The acquisition also comes as OneSpan continues to work closely with channel partners, following the debut of the company’s first formal channel program in December 2023.

The combination of OneSpan and Nok Nok Labs should enable solution and service provider partners to find new opportunities around driving passwordless adoption with customers, according to Jain.

“This should help partners to make it easier to stitch together different solutions — and make the lives of the customers a bit simpler,” he said.