2022: A Year In Review

We’re wrapping up 2022, making this the ideal time to reflect on all that has happened this past year.

This year has been one of growth and transformation for passbolt, including attending numerous events, launching mobile apps, expanding features, welcoming countless new users, and adding even more wonderful people to our team. The year 2022 was an exciting year!

But, 2023 is a year of potential, and we know there is so much more we can accomplish in the upcoming year. First, we’re kicking off the new year by showcasing what we’ve completed this year.

There’s so much to celebrate from 2022; here are some of the highlights:

2022 In Numbers

We couldn’t achieve the following outcomes without the support of our community!

• 🖐️ 5 years since founding!
• 🤩 From 4K to 7K more stars on GitHub (that’s 51% growth).
• 📁 +120% monthly server downloads for Passbolt CE
• 🪩 44% more daily active users (55K more daily users)!
• 👋 8K additional Pro & Cloud users (a 47% increase from last year).
• 🤝 285% increase in organisations using passbolt.
• 🎉 From 16 to 24 full-time employees!
• 💾 2 new Linux distros supported for a total of 9 supported.
• 💸 115% increase in revenue.
• 😤 Still at 99.99% uptime (including scheduled maintenance).
• 🌐 46% more website visits.
• 👀 132,840 average monthly community pageviews!
• 🐦 18% more Twitter followers.
• 💼 62% more LinkedIn followers.

January

2022 started off on a high note with the release of the passbolt mobile app! This allowed users to access their passbolt on Android and iOS, enabling them to manage, access, and search for passwords on the go.

Japanese, Dutch, and Polish translations were also included in the January releases. We’re proud to expand the usability of passbolt and promote internationalisation. Hoping to contribute? You can help translate passbolt here.

The January release also made it possible to use PostgreSQL as a database backend for passbolt and started working on supporting a deeper integration.

Driven by the community, an updated command line interface was launched. A Go app and library built to support the most recent passbolt versions and features.

We also successfully completed our annual SOC2 type II security audit!

February

In February, passbolt was awarded the “Cybersecurity Made in Europe” badge by the European Cyber Security Organisation (ESCO). Passbolt received this label after meeting the security criteria set forward by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA).

The security criteria set forth by ENISA include security by design, adherence to the least privilege principle, support for strong authentication, asset protection, supply chain security, transparent documentation, quality management, data usage restrictions, and headquarters location in the EU.

April

In April, we added additional functionality to the mobile application, such as filtering, favourites, folder organisation, and other features. The mobile apps including these added features are still 100% open source.

We also introduced support for two additional Linux distributions in April: openSUSE and Fedora!

April also marked a year since passbolt was labelled “Made in Luxembourg” by the Luxembourg Chamber of Commerce. We were honoured to earn this accreditation following an audit by the Chamber of Commerce. We are dedicated to creating a genuine Luxembourg-based, European-made password manager.

May

May was the month we put a fresh lick of paint on the user interface! We revisited the full GUI for edits and rewrote the entire front-end of passbolt! This restructuring allows users to create new themes using storybooks. We quickly started working on some more themes.

Towards the end of May, we also released experimental support for Elliptic Curve Cryptography (ECC) Keys as an alternative to RSA.

This month also saw the release of the account recovery tool for passbolt Pro. This feature is also known as secret key escrow. It allows users to completely recover access to their passbolt if a passphrase or private key has been lost and archived via an organisation-wide key.

June

In early June, we spent three days in France at Le Forum International de la Cybersécurité (FIC) or The International Cybersecurity Forum. This is a one-of-a-kind event that brings together the entire cybersecurity ecosystem. We always enjoy attending not only to showcase passbolt and our offerings but to learn more about the challenges existing consumers are facing.

July

In July, we published the storybook project allowing users to create their own unique themes! We’re so excited to see what everyone comes up with. Learn how to contribute or develop a new theme here.

We also completed fixes following a Cure53 audit of the account recovery tool. These fixes made it more stable and secure. The complete audit report is available in the release notes.

Performance of passbolt also greatly improved with July’s release, seeing a 10x performance boost on the front-end.

With the July release, the community made passbolt available in Spanish and enhanced the translation system to support more complex translations. We’re incredibly grateful to everyone who helped passbolt become more accessible, you can help translate passbolt.

September

At the end of September, passbolt co-founder, Remy, hosted a keynote section at CakeFest 2022! He shared the lessons learned, explaining part of the build process through mistakes we made and problems we encountered.

DoNow also included us in a DoNews episode, sharing insightful details about our features.

October

In October, John Hammond created a video sharing information about passbolt setup on YouTube. John took his viewers through a tour of passbolt while sharing information about how he used AWS to set up a passbolt instance.

Additionally, earlier in the month, we sponsored a video about Kubernetes policies and admission controllers by DevOps ToolKit.

We love supporting content creators who offer technology and cybersecurity resources, education and news. Feel free to reach out to us if you are interested in promoting or talking about Passbolt!

November

We began November with a visit to Paris, where we attended the Open Source Experience and met so many wonderful individuals from the community and other open source projects. At the event, we hosted a booth where we shared information about passbolt, our mission and features we offer.

In November, we also released passbolt v3.8 which updated the availability of SMTP settings. In fact, this release gave administrators an entire screen for updating their SMTP settings.

Two new themes were also introduced in the November release! Both a light and dark solarized theme were made available. If you haven’t seen them, check them out!

December

In December, we were featured by Christian Lempa! He wrote a fantastic tutorial setting up passbolt on a docker server! Check it out here.

We spent December wrapping up the year, performing cloud maintenance, fixing some outstanding issues, and working on what’s right around the corner! Release 3.9!

Looking Forward to 2023

We’re starting off 2023 on a strong note, with v3.9 right around the corner. The team is working hard to finalise some details, but you can expect it soon! This release will include widened availability for multi-factor authentication (MFA), SSO support for Pro (Alpha), and PHP 8.2 support.

We saw a 50% increase in full-time team members in 2022, and passbolt is still growing! In the first quarter, we will be hiring for three new positions. Visit our website to see what positions are available.

As for the rest of 2023, there are big things planned. We’re extending our features, documentation, support articles, and community offerings. It’s the start of a new year and the possibilities are endless.

Here are some of the features to look forward to in 2023:

• Users self-registration with passbolt
• MFA Policy implementation and enforcement
• Key transfer from mobile to mobile
• Password expiry for organisations
• Numerous improvements to the UI
• Custom fields and additional content types
• Audit logs and reports
• A desktop application (yeah!!)

Learn more about future features on our website. Want to request a feature? Make a suggestion here.

What else can you expect?

• Expanded information about passbolt features on the website
• Additional user and administrator guides
• Refreshed API documentation
• Improved interactions through GitHub and Reddit
• New affiliate programmes perks

Come meet us at these events and more throughout 2023:

• FOSDEM
• FIC Europe
• IT-SA
• Slush
• European Cyber Week
• Open Source Experience Paris

With another year in the books, passbolt is so excited to have a growing community to celebrate our achievements with. We look forward to another year collaborating with everyone, let’s see what we can do in 2023!

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