The password will soon be obsolete | TechBuzz

In May 2022, Apple, Google and Microsoft announced that they wanted to massively expand the option of password-free login. At the beginning of June, Apple announced at its Developers Conference that in the medium term, password authentication, which is still ubiquitous on the Internet today, will die out. In its place, initially in the Apple browser Safari, there is a password-free login with the so-called Passkey. Apple is thus implementing a security upgrade that the FIDO Alliance (Fast IDentity Online), which according to Wikipedia now includes more than 150 companies, came together to introduce in 2012. Most recently, Apple, Google and Microsoft announced in May that they wanted to massively expand the possibility of password-free registration. Now at the latest, companies that generate sales online should start thinking about how they can make their business processes fit for the future.

Apple is implementing the goals of the FIDO Alliance in the form of a solution dubbed “Passkey”. This is based on a combination of strong encryption and biometric data, as recorded by the sensors of laptops or mobile devices. To activate the function on a website or in an app, users only need to create a digital authorization key once using Apple’s face recognition FaceID or the fingerprint scanner TouchID. This key is only valid for the respective website or app for which it was created. What is new is that the passkey is passed on to the user’s other devices via the iCloud keychain, thus enabling cross-device authorization. Since other members of the FIDO Alliance such as Microsoft and Google also support the system, rapid adoption is expected in the coming years.

The password-free authentication should make it impossible to intercept login data and thus reliably slow down data thieves. The fact that leading hardware and software providers are working together on implementation shows what is the order of the day: where this has not yet happened, online service providers and retailers should make their login processes future-proof and enable access without a password. Technology groups such as Apple, Google and Microsoft deliver the solution on the user/customer side as standard. Now the companies have to follow suit and adapt their login systems so that the passwordless security functions can also be used.