Apple, Google and Microsoft have announced that they want to eliminate forever the need to authenticate to digital services with passwords. For this they will develop an infrastructure to allow login without an alphanumeric key on smartphones (Android and iOS), computers (Windows and macOS) and browsers (Chrome, Edge and Safari), and which should start operating as early as next year. The three tech giants were brought together by the Fido Alliance, founded in 2013, whose declared mission is “to promote authentication standards that help reduce the world’s excessive dependence on passwords”. The news comes close to the World Password day yesterday 5 May.
According to Verizon’s annual report on cyber data breaches, 80% of these are still caused by insecure passwords and weak credentials. As explained in an official Apple note, once the system is active, you can use your smartphone to access an app or web service regardless of the operating software or browser in use. The same operation that we perform several times a day to unlock the phone, from face and fingerprint recognition to codes, will be enough to enter sites and applications, as a fast and secure means of authentication. Users will also be able to automatically access their credentials on multiple devices, without having to re-register each account. Although Apple, Google and Microsoft have long supported the passwordless login standard created by the Fido Alliance, there is still no interoperability between these companies’ platforms, applications and security standards. According to the three giants, the novelty will make it much more difficult for hackers to steal login information, given the absence of keys in numbers and letters and the mere presence of the smartphone as a means of login.
Source: Ansa
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