Passkeys In Lieu Of Passwords?

INTERESTING THOUGHT. Most people who are active on the internet have several online accounts requiring multiple passwords, ideally unique.

- Jayesh Shah

From a security perspective, experts recommend that website passwords should be changed every three months and good password protocol dictates the use of different passwords for different accounts, especially ones where financial transactions are undertaken.

Add to that, the fact that a strong password requires a combination of mixed case alphabets, letters and special characters mean life is not only not easy but quite complicated and cumbersome.

According to FIDO (Fast Identity Online) Alliance, a nonprofit organisation that seeks to standarise authentication, passwords are the root cause of over 80 per cent of data breaches.

Enter passkeys, a mode of logging in to portals and apps without passwords; passkeys seem to be the way ahead in securing our online accounts and making them less vulnerable to attacks by hackers. Apple announced passkey support on MacOS Ventura, iOS 16 and iPad OS 16 at its conference in June 2022. Google rolled out passkeys in May 2023.

HOW PASSKEYS WORK

A passkey works in a manner similar to the two-factor authentication (TFA). It uses Bluetooth authentication instead of Wi-Fi. Bluetooth requires close proximity of the user to the device and this helps verify the identity of the user. Passkeys work on public-key cryptography which essentially means there are a set of digital keys, public and private.