On May 5, 2022, on World Password Day, Apple, Microsoft and Google announced that they will offer a single passwordless authentication standard across their platforms throughout the year, including their websites.

The companies’ platforms will begin to support the passwordless online authentication protocol developed by the alliance of technology companies FIDO and the World Wide Web consortium.

Users will be able to choose their smartphone as the main authentication device. They will then be able to access apps, websites, and other digital services by biometrically scanning or entering the mobile device’s PIN.

The security of such an authentication process will provide a unique encryption password token transmitted between the smartphone and the website. Such encryption keys will be asymmetric. This means that if attackers gain access to part of the token as a result of hacking the site, there will be no threat to users.

The main idea of ​​the FIDO consortium is to make the authorization process dependent on the physical device. This will increase not only the security of accessing sites, but also the convenience.

Passwordless authentication does not allow hackers to obtain passwords from potential victims or use stolen security combinations due to phishing attacks. It is much more difficult for attackers to remotely hack network users.

At Apple, Microsoft and Google reported that if the smartphone is lost, it is easy to transfer the passkey token to another device, including the “cloud”.

Passwordless authentication will be available on Windows, macOS, iOS, Android, as well as Chrome and Safari browsers in 2022-2023.