On World Password Day, Apple, Google, and Microsoft announced that they will be expanding support for the passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium. The three companies have already implemented support for passwordless sign-ins on their various platforms, but they’re now committed to making this experience more seamless for users.
The first new capability that Apple, Google, and Microsoft are planning to implement on their platforms is enabling users to use FIDO authentication on their mobile device to sign in to an app or website, regardless of the platform. The second new capability will allow users to automatically access their FIDO sign-in credentials on all of their devices without having to re-enroll every account on each of them.
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“The expanded standards-based capabilities will give websites and apps the ability to offer an end-to-end passwordless option. Users will sign in through the same action that they take multiple times each day to unlock their devices, such as a simple verification of their fingerprint or face, or a device PIN. This new approach protects against phishing and sign-in will be radically more secure when compared to passwords and legacy multi-factor technologies such as one-time passcodes sent over SMS,” the FIDO Alliance explained.
Apple, Google, and Microsoft are planning to implement these enhanced passwordless features on their platforms “over the course of the coming year.” Abandoning passwords should be a big step forward for security, even though it probably isn’t going to be as easy and obvious as it seems for most people.