It’s no secret that passwordless authentication is taking over. Global tech leaders, such as Apple, Google, and Microsoft, are shifting towards using passkeys. Taking advantage of public-key cryptography, passkeys bring a near paradigm-shifting experience in digital security.
iThemes has been leading the way towards making WordPress and, ultimately, the whole Internet more secure and usable for everyone. The future is passwordless, and we are here to tell you why.
In this guide to passwordless authentication, you will learn how passkeys overcome the security vulnerabilities of password-based authentication and why you should start using them.
The Journey to Passwordless Authentication
The journey to passwordless authentication has already begun. All major browsers and tech giants have introduced full support for passkeys. 2022 has become a new milestone in implementing more consistent, secure, and easy passwordless sign-ins across multiple devices and digital platforms.
Every year, World Password Day, designated as the first Thursday of May, celebrates the new advances made in a joint effort to make the web more secure and usable for everyone. On May 05, 2022, Apple, Google, and Microsoft announced plans to expand support for the passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium.
For years, FIDO (Fast Identity Online) Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium have been working on a set of standards that will allow passwordless authentication to be implemented across the internet. FIDO 2 is the newest set of specifications, now supported by most browsers and platforms.
We will review how passwordless authentication works in more detail further in the guide. But before that, let’s see why password authentication is now gradually becoming a thing of the past.
Why is Password-based Authentication Left Behind?
Password-based authentication has been with us for almost as long as the internet exists, allowing the users to sign into a website or web application by using a credential pair – a username and password. This approach has proven its reliability and versatility and has been the industry standard for years.
However, despite its easy implementation and usage, numerous drawbacks and security risks associated with password-based authentication were quickly discovered on both the user and the server side. Simply put, both the users and the servers lack the capability to keep the shared secret secure.
The major security risks associated with password-based authentication are centered around using the password as the shared secret. This can become available to a malicious actor at different stages of the authentication process. Passwords can be breached or simply guessed due to a successful brute
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This article was written by Kiki Sheldon and originally published on WordPress News | iThemes Blog.