To make the web a safer and easier-to-use space for the masses, Apple, Google, and Microsoft today announced several initiatives to expand support for a general approach developed by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Passwordless login standard.
This new feature will enable websites and apps to provide consumers with more consistent, secure, and easier passwordless logins across multiple devices and platforms.
Password-only authentication is one of the most significant cybersecurity issues, and managing a large number of passwords is an extremely cumbersome task for consumers, which often results in consumers repeatedly using the same password to log in to different services. This practice is costly and can lead to account takeovers, data breaches, and even identity theft. Password managers and traditional forms of two-factor authentication have gradually improved these problems, while the industry as a whole has been collaborating to create easier and more secure login technologies.
Standards-based authentication has been expanded to provide end-to-end passwordless options for web pages and apps. Users will be able to log in with a simple fingerprint or face verification, or a device PIN, etc., through the same actions as unlocking the device, which they do multiple times throughout the day. Compared to passwords and traditional multi-factor techniques (such as sending one-time passwords in text messages), this new approach protects against phishing and provides a huge jump in login security.
Expanded support for passwordless standards
Within the framework of the FIDO Alliance and the W3C, hundreds of technology companies and service providers from around the world have worked together to develop a passwordless login standard that is supported by billions of devices and all modern web browsers. Apple, Google, and Microsoft have led the development of this set of extensions and are building support for their respective platforms. The platforms of these companies already support the FIDO Alliance standard, which enables passwordless login on billions of industry-leading devices, but previously, users had to log in to each website or app on each device one by one. to use this function. The new initiative announced today expands the implementation of these features on the platform, bringing two new features to users for smoother and more secure passwordless logins:
- Allows users to automatically access their FIDO login credentials (or “keys”) on a variety of devices, including brand new ones, without having to re-register each account.
- Let users use FIDO authentication on mobile devices to log in to apps or websites from nearby devices, regardless of the OS platform or browser running on those devices.
In addition to creating a better user experience, extensive support for standards-based login methods will also allow service providers to provide FIDO credentials as an alternative way to log in or recover accounts without requiring a password. Apple, Google and Microsoft platforms are expected to implement these new capabilities within the next year.