Google, Apple, and Microsoft Take One Step Closer to a Passwordless Future with FIDO

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Image: FIDO Alliance

Today is World Password Day, and Google has decided to celebrate by announcing its latest step in getting rid of passwords entirely by expanding its support of FIDO to Chrome and Android devices, a sign-in standard developed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the FIDO Alliance that aims to ease and simplify user access. With FIDO, users no longer have to remember or manage passwords; signing into a website or app will simply require users to unlock their phones, which are used to store a FIDO credential for unlocking an account. Apple and Microsoft have also agreed to expanding FIDO support.

When you sign into a website or app on your phone, you will simply unlock your phone — your account won’t need a password anymore.

Instead, your phone will store a FIDO credential called a passkey which is used to unlock your online account. The passkey makes signing in far more secure, as it’s based on public key cryptography and is only shown to your online account when you unlock your phone.

To sign into a website on your computer, you’ll just need your phone nearby and you’ll simply be prompted to unlock it for access. Once you’ve done this, you won’t need your phone again and you can sign in by just unlocking your computer. Even if you lose your phone, your passkeys will securely sync to your new phone from cloud backup, allowing you to pick up right where your old device left off.

Source: Google

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Tsing Mui
News poster at The FPS Review.

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