A Future Without Passwords
“Hackers don’t break in – they sign in.” In 2022, Microsoft tracked 1,287 password attacks every second. That’s more than 111 million per day according to Joy Chik, President of Identity & Network Access at Microsoft.
The ongoing story of online security has been a tradeoff. The more secure your accounts are, the more inconvenient it is to sign in and use them. Strengthening your accounts adds layers of protection, but verifying your identity often involves intricate steps. Industry tech groups have been working to ditch passwords for many years.
What are passkeys?
Passkeys provide more security and save time. Passkeys allow you to authenticate without having to enter a username or password or provide any additional authentication factor according to Sampath Srinivas, PM Director, Secure Authentication, Google and President, FIDO Alliance. (For a good night’s sleep, we encourage you to read more about the decade of research from the FIDO Alliance and contributing standards and technology members Apple, Microsoft, and Google. https://fidoalliance.org/)
How do passkeys work?
Currently, we understand passwords and two-step verification, yet passkeys sign you into a website or app on your phone when you simply unlock your phone — your account won’t need a password anymore.
To sign into a website on your computer, you’ll just need your phone nearby and you’ll simply be prompted to unlock it for access. Once you’ve done this, you won’t need your phone again and you can sign in by just unlocking your computer. Even if you lose your phone, your passkeys will securely sync to your new phone from cloud backup, allowing you to pick up right where your old device left off.
Time will tell if this is the beginning of the end of passwords as Apple, Google and Microsoft roll out support for the same passkey standards across all their major platforms.
Give us a call to discuss increasing your security posture and saving your valuable time with password authentication starting with prioritizing your revenue generation applications.