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NordPass releases new features on the back of extensive audit
Thu, 12th Mar 2020
FYI, this story is more than a year old

NordPass has launched new features for PCs and mobiles, including the ability to share passwords, as well as new mobile features and native apps.

Prior to implementing these new features NordPass completed a full security audit, which was performed by Cure53, a Berlin-based IT company.

The audit focused on NordPass cryptographic premise, source code, background application and its codebase. The NordPass infrastructure was audited in several stages before and after the official release in November last year.

Cure53 founder and CEO Dr. Mario Heidreich says, “Numerous positive observations have been made in relation to the level of detail and adherence to the specification, clarity and readability of the Go code and implementation, overall security of the desktop application, browser extension, as well as iOS and Android branches of the NordPass applications. In Cure53's expert opinion, the NordPass complex should be judged as secure.

NordPass security expert Chad Hammond responded to this result, saying, “The company is delighted with the results: Our customers trust is crucial to us. At NordPass, our mission is to develop affordable, secure, and easy-to-use cybersecurity tools.

“We aim to deliver simpler, cleaner, faster, and safer solutions. A crucial step toward achieving our goal was an independent audit, which helped us build a more reliable and robust password manager. The audit showed that we measure up to our claims.

Trusted Contacts is NordPass's new feature to share passwords. When a user adds someone to the Trusted Contacts list, they confirm if they want to establish an encrypted connection with that person. In this way, when they share passwords they can ensure the correct person is receiving the information, NordPass states.

Hammond says, “Sharing your passwords over text or sticky notes is hazardous. The Trusted Contacts feature in NordPass makes password sharing both safe and convenient.

When it comes to new mobile features, the company has released OCR scanning technology, which is used to recognise text in documents, photos, or image files.

This technology can also be used to scana user's credit card details or written notes for secure storage in the NordPass vault. In addition, NordPass has added biometrics for mobile.

From now on, users can set up the NordPass app with the Face ID or fingerprint for access to the encrypted vault. Another feature is offline capabilities. According to the company, NordPass will now be accessible offline on mobile and support Android and iOS tablets.

Finally, it has also introduced an autofill feature that recognises a user's favorite websites and asks whether they would like to sign in. If yes, the sign-in takes just one click. NordPass has released new native apps for Mac, Windows and Linux, another significant step for the product, according to the company.

These apps work together with the browser extension for seamless integration and also alert users if they are trying to enter credentials into an unsafe website, NordPass states.

The native apps also allow people to manage the password vault on their computer without launching the browser. Users can set up the apps to launch automatically whenever their computer starts.

Furthermore, they can now select multiple credentials in the vault for more comfortable use. NordPass was launched in November 2019. It's a secure password manager with security and zero-knowledge architecture, two-factor authentication (2FA), and password management. It was created by NordVPN, a global VPN service provider.