In a press release, Apple said that all three companies are expanding support for a common passwordless sign-in standard. FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium. The new capability will allow websites and apps to offer consumers consistent, secure and easy passwordless sign-in across devices and platforms.
It’s not just the big three tech companies, but hundreds of technology companies and service providers around the world working within the FIDO Alliance and the W3C to create passwordless sign-in standards. Apple, Google and Microsoft have led the development of this expanded set of capabilities and are now building support into their respective platforms.
How will passwordless sign-in work?
Apple, Google and Microsoft platforms already support FIDO Alliance standards to enable passwordless sign-in on billions of industry-leading devices. However, users were required to sign in to each website or app with each device before using the passwordless functionality. Users will now get two new capabilities for more seamless and secure passwordless sign-in:
- Allow users to access their FIDO sign-in credentials (referred to by some as “passkeys” by some) on multiple devices, even new ones, without re-enrolling each account.
- Enable users to use FIDO authentication on their mobile device to sign in to an app or website on their mobile device, regardless of the OS platform or browser they are running.
These new capabilities are expected to be available on Apple, Google and Microsoft platforms in the coming year.
The new method, according to Apple, will protect against phishing and sign-in more securely than passwords and legacy multi-factor technologies such as one-time passcodes sent over SMS.
“Just like we design our products to be intuitive and capable, we also design them to be private and secure,” said Kurt Knight, Apple’s senior director of platform product marketing. “Working with industry to establish new, more secure sign-in methods that provide better security and eliminate password vulnerabilities is central to our commitment to building products that maximize security and transparent Provide user experience – with the goal of keeping all users’ personal information secure.”
“The complete transition to a passwordless world will begin with consumers making it a natural part of their lives. Any viable solution will be safer, easier and faster than the passwords and legacy multi-factor authentication methods used today.” should,” said Alex Simmons, corporate vice president, Identity Program Management at Microsoft.
Mark Risher, Google’s senior director of product management, said, “For Google, this represents nearly a decade of work we’ve done with FIDO, as part of our continued innovation towards a passwordless future. We look forward to making FIDO-based technology available on Chrome, ChromeOS, Android and other platforms, and encourage app and website developers to adopt it, so that people around the world can safely move away from the risk and hassle of passwords.”