San Antonio startup Jungle Disk announced Tuesday the acquisition of TeamPassword, which will bring a password security product to Jungle Disk’s services for small businesses.
Details of the transaction were not disclosed. Brian Sierakowski, TeamPassword’s CEO and only full-time employee, will continue to head up the password manager as an employee of Jungle Disk. Previously based in Baltimore, Sierakowski will move to Jungle Disk’s San Antonio office at 110 E. Houston St.
Password management software, such as 1Password and LastPass, helps secure the storage and creation of passwords throughout a user’s cloud-based services. For example, a password manager can store passwords for Google Suite, Facebook, Instagram and other services while also ensuring they are hard to crack and that duplicates are minimized. Many platforms offer autofill functionality so that users do not have to manually enter long and hard-to-remember generated passwords.
Founded in 2007, Jungle Disk was purchased by Rackspace and then reacquired a few years ago by a group that includes CEO Bret Piatt. Since then, the company has focused on providing a comprehensive suite of data security services to its roughly 25,000 customers, Piatt said.
TeamPassword, founded five years ago, has honed a password management platform built for small companies that share passwords across the software products they use. Cloud computing has made the secure storage and access to those passwords all the more important, Piatt said.
“Most folks end up in this quandary of ‘Do I pick one password and use it everywhere, do I pick some easy password mnemonic – still probably not very secure – or do I pick secure passwords and make my life a headache?’” Piatt said. “It doesn’t have to be a headache. If you have a password management service, you can have secure passwords and easy workflows.”
Piatt said he and Sierakowski will work on a long-term plan for fully rolling out the password management service to Jungle Disk’s clientele of small businesses employing anywhere from two to 250 employees. The service is currently available at an administrative level.
Jungle Disk last year acquired SafetyNet, which securely backs up financial data from such applications as Quickbooks Online.
Piatt said his company will continue to broaden its scope with “holistic solutions” to the cybersecurity threats facing small businesses.
“We’re working to build the next great tech company in the city, and cybersecurity is on the rise here in San Antonio,” he said. “We think it’s an amazing place to do business, and we look forward to being part of the boom that we have going here.”
