A few months ago, Google announced that they are working on the implementation of a passwordless authentication. According to Google, a future without passwords could be safer for everyone.
But what exactly passwordless mean? How does the passwordless authentication work?
In this short post, we’ll clear all your doubts!
What does passwordless authentication mean?
The passwordless authentication is a type of login that doesn’t require you to memorize a password, because it relies on other types of technologies.
Passwords are not as safe as they seem. People tend to reuse their passwords on different websites, or use weak passwords, and this leads to data breaches. According to a recent study conducted in the United States, the majority of respondents had their passwords breached once or twice in 2021.
Let’s have a look at how it works in the next paragraph.
How does passwordless authentication work?
As we said, compared to authentication with a password, the passwordless login doesn’t require you to remember anything.
The passwordless login generally relies on factors that are not knowledge-based, such as:
- ownership factors: users can login thanks to something that they own, e.g. a mobile phone, a security token, a one-time password generator, etc.
- inherence factors: users can login thanks to something that they are. The inherence factors usually rely on biometric data, e.g. fingerprints, voice or face recognition, etc.
As these factors are a lot harder to access and steal, the risk of a data breach is reduced.
A first peak in a future without passwords
In these last years, many companies are switching to a passwordless authentication method, mainly for security reasons.
Big companies, too, are joining efforts to make the passwordless login a security standard.
👉 Google will soon implement passwordless support for FIDO Sign-in standards in Android & Chrome.
👉 Microsoft is already offering authentication methods that don’t need a password.
👉 Apple, Google and Microsoft announced that they will work together on a common passwordless sign-in standard.
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