Passwords have been keeping us safe online for years but, according to
tech industry big wigs, they are not safe enough. For a while now a group calling themselves the FIDO Alliance, made up of some of the biggest names in tech from Google and Amazon to Intel, has been telling us just how insecure our passwords are and how something needs to be done about it. Passwordless authentication is the future then, and you know we have reached a tipping point when you get password manager apps actively moving away from passwords, with NordPass now the latest in a series of password managers to do so.
New upgrades from NordPass will enable passwordless authentication to work through the service. The FIDO Alliance’s main innovation in this regard has been passkeys, and this is what the NordPass update is enabling.
Passkeys are encrypted keys that are stored on other devices that allow you to access your accounts without having to come up with, store, or remember a password. They normally work by using the biometric security devices such as facial recognition or fingerprint sensors that many smartphones have these days. Following this update, NordPass users will, therefore, be able to store their passkeys in their vault and then access them using their biometric information.
Passkeys have already seen quite a bit of adoption with big-name companies implementing them across their sites, products, and services.
Google has already added passkey functionality to Google Chrome and Android devices and Microsoft has also added it to Windows 11 while other popular websites that have them include the likes of eBay and PayPal. All Apple devices have passkey functionality too.
With password managers now actively helping move us away from using passwords it seems like it is only a matter of time before they will be gone altogether, and all major apps and services ask you to use them over passwords. Personally, I don’t think this is too bad a thing as having used passkeys I can say that they are much more convenient than having to input passwords all the time. However, judging on convenience alone puts the experience on a par with using a good password manager anyway.
