Cloud computing giant Salesforce announced the acquisition of mobile authentication startup Toopher earlier today. It's the first acquisition by Salesforce since July 2014 when it picked up enterprise software company RelateIQ for $390 million.

Toopher, an Austin, Texas based startup, offers two-step authentication to smartphone owners. The system recognizes the location of the smartphone and depending on the location may ask a few security questions.

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Salesforce didn't disclose the amount it paid for Toopher. Given the company managed to raise $3 million in four funding rounds, it's likely the acquisition was low key in terms of financials.

Toopher will shut down all its services in preparation for the move to Salesforce where it will work on bringing the two-step authentication onto Salesforce's growing services suite. The suite currently consists of OpenID Connect and Login Flows, two security tools helping businesses access the cloud.

"Today it is with great excitement that we can unveil our ability to super-charge our superpower-because we are being acquired by Salesforce!" said co-founders Josh Alexander and Evan Grim.

"While we will no longer sell our current products, we are thrilled to join Salesforce where we'll work on delivering the Toopher vision on a much larger scale as part of the world's #1 Cloud Platform. We can't imagine a better team, technology and set of values with which to align."

It's another scoop for Salesforce as it continues to push out new services for business customers. Even though it has yet to report a profit after almost two decades in the tech industry, it's become one of the big players when it comes to cloud computing.

Salesforce has to start offering more from its cloud service to compete with the growing interest from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and IBM.

The growth of the Internet of Things is bound to have a profound effect on the cloud computing business, as well. Salesforce will speak about this at the Dreamforce event.

TagsSalesforce, Toopher, security software, mobile authentication