passwordless sign-in Passwordless logins! FIDO Alliance passkey protocol allows cross-platform passwordless sign-in

The FIDO Alliance is at the forefront of the movements of passwordless sign-in. Over the years, the organization has worked with many technology companies to encourage the adoption of password-free standards for authentication. Now, the people of the FIDO Alliance must be jumping for joy. With the new announcement, Google, Microsoft, and Apple have agreed to be kind to each other to enable passwordless login on their platforms.

The FIDO Alliance published a white paper that introduced the concept of passkeys that enable a cross-platform and cross-device passwordless login. The new announcement ensures that major operating systems support these features. Currently, Apple and Microsoft have several ways to enable passwordless sign-in authentication in their respective ecosystems. Google, on the other hand,  uses several FIDO Alliance protocols to enable two-factor authentication.

There are two major problems with existing systems. If you can't sign in to a website or service on a cross-platform device, or if you can't access your device (such as a phone), you'll need to re-register. The Passkey concept solves both of these problems. You can use the same cloud service to sign in to all your devices and use your iPhone to sign in to your Windows PC. Google, Microsoft, and Apple are all committed to implementing the Passkey standard on their platforms.

User Experiences with Multi-device FIDO Credentials

Allow users to automatically access their FIDO sign-in credentials (referred to by some as a "passkey") on many of their devices, even new ones, without having to re-enroll every account.

Enable users to use FIDO authentication on their mobile device to sign in to an app or website on a nearby device, regardless of the OS platform or browser they are running.

However, the technical details of how it works are still in the conceptual stage. The white paper proposed solutions such as Bluetooth as a gateway for phone-based authentication. To access a website, all you have to do is click a button, authenticate with Touch ID and log in. FIDO Alliance didn’t provide any details on how they are working with different companies to achieve cross-platform passwordless login. Let’s hope we can find out more about how this entire project will evolve and more about the FIDO alliance. But I think everyone can agree that if an organization can succeed in this project, our online life will be much easier.