Kiss your passwords goodbye!
#4 of my Tech Predictions for 2023
The one thing that irritates me the most about being online is passwords! I can’t remember them, they don’t transfer well from device to device, and I keep getting messages that they have been compromised in a data leak.
The good news is that they will be a thing of the past very soon. Due to a new standard: Passkeys.
For as long as anyone cares to remember, passwords have been a source of frustration for both users and security people.
We constantly forget them, reset them, and type them in wrong. But it’s not just the inconvenience that’s the problem. Passwords are also incredibly insecure. According to SplashData’s annual “Worst Passwords” list, the most commonly used password in 2022 was “password” followed by “123456” — passwords that would literally take a hacker milliseconds to crack. Furthermore, The ”Online Authentication Barometer” found that 59% of respondents gave up accessing online accounts when they couldn’t remember their password, and roughly 40% abandoned purchases for the same reason. It’s time to face the facts. Passwords are an irritating and inadequate way to protect us in the digital age.
Enter Passkeys , a new technology that aims to revolutionize how we authenticate ourselves online. It’s a game-changer developed by the FIDO Alliance; an industry group dedicated to reducing our reliance on passwords.
Passkeys eliminates the need for a shared secret (i.e., a password) by utilizing public key cryptography. This means that even if a hacker were to obtain a user’s authentication credentials, they wouldn’t be able to use them to access your account. Instead, users can authenticate themselves using various methods, such as biometrics (fingerprint, face, or iris recognition) or a hardware token.
This makes the authentication process more secure and more convenient for the user. Passkeys is designed to be interoperable across different devices and platforms. Users can authenticate themselves on one device and then use that same method to authenticate and log in on another device without having to use a password.
The standard has already seen wide support from major tech companies such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta — all planning to do a full implementation in 2023. Apple already implemented the Passkeys technology in OS Ventura and iOS16. And Password Managers like Dashlane, 1Password, and Nordpass are moving quickly to integrate the support for Passkeys as well.
Despite this, the roll-out of Passkeys is still in its early stages. Paypal and eBay are among the first to do a full-scale implementation at the beginning of ’23.
So, for now, 2-factor authentication is still the safest way to protect yourself and your data. But I predict that the roll-out of Passkeys will be fast and swift and that most of us will begin to use Passkeys within this year to say goodbye to the inconvenience and insecurity of passwords.
