In what might lead to a revolutionary move, tech giants including Google, Apple, and Microsoft have expressed interest in passwordless sign-in through the FIDO Open authentication standard.
In celebration of the 2022 Word Password Day, tech giants Microsoft, Google, and Apple have announced their plans to offer total support towards a sign-in standard through the FIDO alliance and the W3C, the World Web Consortium. The W3C is intended to eliminate passwords altogether.
Here is the perfect explanation from Google, “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.”
ALSO-READ: Path Traversal Flaw Discovered in OWASP Enterprise Library Security Controls
As per the FIDO alliance, passwords have been a significant cause of cyber threats across the globe. What primarily made passwords highly susceptible are many. People often use similar passwords across devices, and specific passwords can be guessed. Consequently, instances of hacking are on the rise.
It is beyond doubt that passwords are for ensuring the safety of the accounts. They are everywhere. As a result, it wouldn’t be practically feasible to eliminate them totally and all of a sudden, especially when there are low-risk transactions involved.
However, this might be the future if you look at the trends. The technology that can make it possible for organizations to attempt passwordless authentication is available. So, a passwordless-access future is well on its way.
It may not be a challenging task for new start-ups that run their business entirely on modern cloud applications to facilitate a shift to a passwordless world. However, giant enterprises with dependency on traditional commercial applications, homegrown software applications, and different worker use cases may find it extremely tough to materialize such a transition. Nevertheless, certain firms would be able to allocate sufficient resources towards enabling a faster and smoother transition to ‘having no passwords.’