Apple, Google, Microsoft to Support Password-Free Sign-In

<p><strong>MOUNTAIN VIEW<&sol;strong> &&num;8212&semi; In a joint effort to make the web more secure and usable for all&comma; Apple&comma; Google&comma; and Microsoft announced plans to expand support for a common passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium&period; The new capability will allow websites and apps to offer consistent&comma; secure&comma; and easy passwordless sign-ins to consumers across devices and platforms&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Password-only authentication is one of the biggest security problems on the web&comma; and managing so many passwords is cumbersome for consumers&comma; which often leads consumers to reuse the same ones across services&period; This practice can lead to costly account takeovers&comma; data breaches&comma; and even stolen identities&period; While password managers and legacy forms of two-factor authentication offer incremental improvements&comma; there has been industry-wide collaboration to create sign-in technology that is more convenient and more secure&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>The expanded standards-based capabilities will give websites and apps the ability to offer an end-to-end passwordless option&period; Users will sign in through the same action that they take multiple times each day to unlock their devices&comma; such as a simple verification of their fingerprint or face&comma; or a device PIN&period; This new approach protects against phishing and sign-in will be radically more secure when compared to passwords and legacy multi-factor technologies such as one-time passcodes sent over SMS&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<h2 class&equals;"pagebody-header">An Expansion of Passwordless Standard Support<&sol;h2>&NewLine;<p>Hundreds of technology companies and service providers from around the world worked within the FIDO Alliance and W3C to create the passwordless sign-in standards that are already supported in billions of devices and all modern web browsers&period; Apple&comma; Google&comma; and Microsoft have led development of this expanded set of capabilities and are now building support into their respective platforms&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>These companies’ platforms already support FIDO Alliance standards to enable passwordless sign-in on billions of industry-leading devices&comma; but previous implementations require users to sign in to each website or app with each device before they can use passwordless functionality&period; Today’s announcement extends these platform implementations to give users two new capabilities for more seamless and secure passwordless sign-ins&colon;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<ol>&NewLine;<li>Allow users to automatically access their FIDO sign-in credentials &lpar;referred to by some as a &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;passkey”&rpar; on many of their devices&comma; even new ones&comma; without having to reenroll every account&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<li>Enable users to use FIDO authentication on their mobile device to sign in to an app or website on a nearby device&comma; regardless of the OS platform or browser they are running&period;<&sol;li>&NewLine;<&sol;ol>&NewLine;<p>In addition to facilitating a better user experience&comma; the broad support of this standards-based approach will enable service providers to offer FIDO credentials without needing passwords as an alternative sign-in or account recovery method&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>These new capabilities are expected to become available across Apple&comma; Google&comma; and Microsoft platforms over the course of the coming year&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;&OpenCurlyQuote;Simpler&comma; stronger authentication’ is not just FIDO Alliance’s tagline — it also has been a guiding principle for our specifications and deployment guidelines&period; Ubiquity and usability are critical to seeing multi-factor authentication adopted at scale&comma; and we applaud Apple&comma; Google&comma; and Microsoft for helping make this objective a reality by committing to support this user-friendly innovation in their platforms and products&comma;” said Andrew Shikiar&comma; executive director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;This new capability stands to usher in a new wave of low-friction FIDO implementations alongside the ongoing and growing utilization of security keys — giving service providers a full range of options for deploying modern&comma; phishing-resistant authentication&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;The standards developed by the FIDO Alliance and World Wide Web Consortium and being led in practice by these innovative companies is the type of forward-leaning thinking that will ultimately keep the American people safer online&period; I applaud the commitment of our private sector partners to open standards that add flexibility for the service providers and a better user experience for customers&comma;” said Jen Easterly&comma; Director of the U&period;S&period; Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;At CISA&comma; we are working to raise the cybersecurity baseline for all Americans&period; Today is an important milestone in the security journey to encourage built-in security best practices and help us move beyond passwords&period; Cyber is a team sport&comma; and we’re pleased to continue our collaboration&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Just as we design our products to be intuitive and capable&comma; we also design them to be private and secure&comma;” said Kurt Knight&comma; Apple’s Senior Director of Platform Product Marketing&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Working with the industry to establish new&comma; more secure sign-in methods that offer better protection and eliminate the vulnerabilities of passwords is central to our commitment to building products that offer maximum security and a transparent user experience — all with the goal of keeping users’ personal information safe&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;This milestone is a testament to the collaborative work being done across the industry to increase protection and eliminate outdated password-based authentication&comma;” said Mark Risher&comma; Senior Director of Product Management&comma; Google&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;For Google&comma; it represents nearly a decade of work we’ve done alongside FIDO&comma; as part of our continued innovation towards a passwordless future&period; We look forward to making FIDO-based technology available across Chrome&comma; ChromeOS&comma; Android and other platforms&comma; and encourage app and website developers to adopt it&comma; so people around the world can safely move away from the risk and hassle of passwords&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;The complete shift to a passwordless world will begin with consumers making it a natural part of their lives&period; Any viable solution must be safer&comma; easier&comma; and faster than the passwords and legacy multi-factor authentication methods used today&comma;” says Alex Simons&comma; Corporate Vice President&comma; Identity Program Management at Microsoft&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;By working together as a community across platforms&comma; we can at last achieve this vision and make significant progress toward eliminating passwords&period; We see a bright future for FIDO-based credentials in both consumer and enterprise scenarios and will continue to build support across Microsoft apps and services&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p><img class&equals;"alignnone size-full wp-image-2613" src&equals;"http&colon;&sol;&sol;jpq&period;a9a&period;mytemp&period;website&sol;wp-content&sol;uploads&sol;2022&sol;05&sol;fidosignin&period;jpg" alt&equals;"" width&equals;"1086" height&equals;"1600" &sol;><&sol;p>&NewLine;

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