Tech
Goodbye to passwords: Microsoft prepares a move that will affect millions of users
The Redmond company is working to convince its customers to give up passwords for good.
The frenzied activity of hackers is driving a paradigm shift among technology giants. Cyber-attacks are becoming more frequent and have shown that the security of users and employees is increasingly at risk. Many large companies have suffered from the actions of hackers, so Microsoft has decided to take action. The Redmond company is convinced that it has to do away with the password system, although it will not be implemented overnight. The solution is for users to start using passkeys.
“At Microsoft, we block 7,000 attacks on passwords per second—almost double from a year ago,” the company said in a post on its official blog. “At the same time, we’ve seen adversary-in-the-middle phishing attacks increase by 146% year over year. Fortunately, we’ve never had a better solution to these pervasive attacks: passkeys.” These are cryptographic keys that cannot be shared or memorized, making them much less vulnerable to cyberattacks. They use combinations of public and private keys to authenticate users without exposing sensitive information.
Microsoft will try to get millions of users to use Passkey
These new authentication methods include the use of biometric information such as fingerprints, PIN codes, or facial unlocking. “Plus, passkeys eliminate forgotten passwords and one-time codes and reduce support calls,” which also reduces customer service calls. Microsoft’s dilemma is to convince millions of users to make the leap to these new systems. Here are their arguments:
- Signing in with a passkey is three times faster than using a traditional password and eight times faster than a password and traditional multifactor authentication.
- Users are three times more successful signing in with passkeys than with passwords (98% versus 32%).
- 99% of users who start the passkey registration flow complete it.
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