Since day one, passwords have provided the needed protection to our digital lives. We have relied on them to access all of our emails, many of our apps that may be connected to banking, and countless others. All those letters and characters attached to our accounts have kept our information safe and sound. However, the world is changing, and how we all access our identities are going to change as well. As cyber threats have evolved, and users experience demand for faster, safer, and simpler mechanisms to access information, passwordless authentication is showing us that the future of digital security is rapidly transforming.
Why Passwords Are Fading Away
Passwords were once viewed as secure, however their negative effects are well documented:
- Human Error: Individuals tend to reuse passwords across accounts, making security breaches worse.
- Poor choices: The business continues to have common passwords such as "123456" or "password."
- Data breaches: With millions of passwords leaked online each year, this method of security is becoming less reliable.
- User inconvenience: Individuals dislike any difficulty keeping track of complex passwords or resetting their passwords often.
In a primarily digitally-based world, where convenience is just as important as security, these drawbacks have established a definitive need for alternatives.
What Is Passwordless Authentication?
Passwordless authentication is great because it removes the necessity of remembering passwords or being required to enter passwords. In addition to being more user-friendly, passwordless authentication uses different, more secure methods to confirm identity. These methods include:
- Biometrics; fingerprints, facial recognition, and or iris scans.
- Hardware tokens, such as YubiKeys, to generate secure codes.
- One-time passcodes (OTPs), which can be sent through email, but typically go through SMS (not the most secure, but way more popular).
- Magic links, where a link is sent to your email or app to provide access.
- FIDO2 and WebAuthn standards, which are new protocols for authenticated logins (with biometrics or hardware, usually).
Passwordless methods combine high security with less chances of hacking.
The Rise of Biometrics and Beyond
Biometric authentication has already gone popular -- most smartphones today recognize fingerprints or facial characteristics as the main login method. Companies like Apple (Face ID, Touch ID) and Microsoft (Windows Hello) have made biometric authentication acceptable and possible.
The biometric advantage is more than convenience; fingerprint and facial scans are inherently more difficult to copy compared to passwords which can lead to phishing attempts. Biometric authentication is even more useful when used with device encryption and multi-factor authentication to protect against identity theft.
Biometric is not the only future; passwordless approaches are evolving to include contextual and adaptive authentication, both of which are intended to take into account user behaviors, access points, and device types to identify if access should be provided. For instance, if logging in from your normal device at home, you may have easy access without any additional verification (seamless) but if logging in from a different state or country further verification may occur.
The Business Case for Passwordless
For companies, a passwordless future ultimately has several benefits:
- Better security - There is less risk of phishing, credential stuffing, and brute-force attacks.
- Reduced costs - Less password resets means less IT support costs.
- Better user experience - Customers and employees have faster and smoother access.
- Compliance - There are many regulations now pushing towards stronger identity verification methods.
Big technology companies (i.e. Google, Apple, and Microsoft) are embracing passwordless solutions and are working with the FIDO Alliance, which is working to define standards to set a global standard. This helps to create quicker adoption across many industries.
Challenges and Concerns
Although the future is promising a passwordless world, it does have some challenges:
- Privacy concerns: Anyone with biometric access can misuse it. So it gave a threat to privacy and surveillance.
- Accessibility: Not all users have the latest technology or hardware tokens for biometric verification.
- Transition challenges: In order to successfully transition to a passwordless world, organisations will have to rework most of their systems and to educate users.
- Alternative methods: If or when biometrics fail, devices are lost, or circumstances change, we need to consider secure alternative methods for authentication and verification.
There are solutions to all of these challenges, if there is a reasonable interface between innovation, regulation, and an educated consumer base across the world.
What the Future Holds
The passwordless transition is already happening. Big tech companies have announced their passkey offerings—password alternatives that synchronize and communicate securely across many devices and platforms. In the next five years, passkeys are likely to play a central role for most consumer applications, and password signs will be relegated to the back of our minds.
For enterprise customers, adaptive and multi-factorial authentication methodologies are likely to be common. We will log-in at work with biometrics, security keys, and contextual factors which ensures flexibility and security.
For longer terms, authentication may blend seamlessly into our lives—our devices, wearables, or our digital identities (perhaps held on a blockchain) may automatically authenticate us. Access will seem natural, secure, and almost invisible.
Passwords are now becoming outdated! Cyber criminals will continue to advance their weapons, and everyday users are exhausted managing complicated passwords. Passwordless authentication offers a highly desirable future of security and convenience.
As organisations work to embrace passwordless transitions, and as sectors and standards such as FIDO2 take hold, our current days of forgotten passwords and hacked accounts remain behind. We're on a rapid ascent toward a digital landscape where access will be far faster, safer, and more human-centric.