According to reports, This new standard is called Passkey or Multi-device FIDO credentials.
Apple, Google and Microsoft said a new, faster and more secure sign-in method is expected to be available across major tech platforms over the course of the coming year.
The decision to stop the use of passwords is advanced as “FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium” have created a passwordless sign-in standard embraced by major Operating System vendors. It is admitted that long, complex, unique, and confidential passwords are very secure but are very hard to memorize, hence, the need to go passwordless. Also, the recent rise of phishing makes it easy for third parties to trick people into exposing their passwords. In terms of data breaches, hackers easily access and share usernames and passwords.
Today’s announcement extends these platform implementations to give users two new capabilities for more seamless and secure passwordless sign-ins:
- Allow users to automatically access their FIDO sign-in credentials (referred to by some as a “passkey”) on many of their devices, even new ones, without having to reenroll every account.
- Enable users to use FIDO authentication on their mobile device to sign in to an app or website on a nearby device, regardless of the OS platform or browser they are running.
According to reports, this new standard is called “Passkey” or “multi-device FIDO credential.” This has been designed for the app or website being visited to send a request to the user’s phone for authentication instead of entering a long string of characters as a password. The authentication can reportedly take the form of a pin or biometric.
STATEMENT FROM APPLE
“Just as we design our products to be intuitive and capable, we also design them to be private and secure,” said Kurt Knight, Apple’s Senior Director of Platform Product Marketing. “Working with the industry to establish new, more secure sign-in methods that offer better protection and eliminate the vulnerabilities of passwords is central to our commitment to building products that offer maximum security and a transparent user experience — all with the goal of keeping users’ personal information safe.”
STATEMENT FROM MICROSOFT
“The complete shift to a passwordless world will begin with consumers making it a natural part of their lives. Any viable solution must be safer, easier, and faster than the passwords and legacy multi-factor authentication methods used today,” says Alex Simons, Corporate Vice President, Identity Program Management at Microsoft. “By working together as a community across platforms, we can at last achieve this vision and make significant progress toward eliminating passwords. We see a bright future for FIDO-based credentials in both consumer and enterprise scenarios and will continue to build support across Microsoft apps and services.”
STATEMENT FROM GOOGLE
“This milestone is a testament to the collaborative work being done across the industry to increase protection and eliminate outdated password-based authentication,” said Mark Risher, Senior Director of Product Management, Google.
“For Google, it represents nearly a decade of work we’ve done alongside FIDO, as part of our continued innovation towards a passwordless future. We look forward to making FIDO-based technology available across Chrome, ChromeOS, Android and other platforms, and encourage app and website developers to adopt it, so people around the world can safely move away from the risk and hassle of passwords.”
