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The future is passwordless
Passwords were suitable for authentication when we had fewer accounts. Best practices were to change each password monthly and to use a variety of letters, numbers and symbols. Then came password managers where you trusted a single source to hold all of your passwords and they handled all of the administrative tasks. The huge downside is a single point of failure. If someone gets your master password they have access to all of your accounts.
Nowadays, everyone’s digital footprint is larger, making passwords more of a burden and often insecure as many don’t follow all the best practices. Where do you keep your list of passwords?
Here’s are the top 20 passwords – recognize any?
123456
123456789
Qwerty
Password
12345
12345678
111111
1234567
123123
Qwerty123
1q2w3e
1234567890
DEFAULT
0
Abc123
666666
123321
Qwertyuiop
Iloveyou
654321
A growing threat
Data breaches are 68 percent higher than in 2020 according to the Identity Theft Resource Center published in January 2022. Another risk to passwords is that any password sent over the Internet, encrypted or not, can be intercepted and potentially hacked.
The Solution
The FIDO Alliance is an open industry association with a focused mission: authentication standards to help reduce the world’s over-reliance on passwords. The FIDO Alliance promotes the development of, use of, and compliance with standards for authentication and device attestation.
How FIDO works
The FIDO protocols use standard public key cryptography techniques to provide stronger authentication. During registration with an online service, the user’s client device creates a new key pair. It retains the private key and registers the public key with the online service. Authentication is done by the client device proving possession of the private key to the service by signing a challenge. The client’s private keys can be used only after they are unlocked locally on the device by the user. The local unlock is accomplished by a user–friendly and secure action such as swiping a finger, entering a PIN, speaking into a microphone, inserting a second–factor device or pressing a button.
Adopt a Zero Trust Security Strategy
Zero Trust is a modern approach to the evolving world of cybersecurity. It emphasizes the need to move away from a perimeter-centric network approach (“trust but verify”) to a model focused on continuous assessment of trust across every device, user and application (“never trust, always verify”).
In a nutshell, FIDO seeks to use multiple forms of local authentication to secure your accounts. Facial recognition, fingerprints, voice – all processed locally without your credentials being transmitted over the Internet. Here’s a good summary from https://fidoalliance.org/what-is-fido/
Password problems:
Passwords are the root cause of over 80% of data breaches
Users have more than 90 online accounts
Up to 51% of passwords are reused
1/3 of online purchases are abandoned due to forgotten passwords
$70 average help desk cost for a single password reset
Fido authentication benefits:
Mitigate data breach risks
Deploy FIDO-enabled services to a rapidly growing addressable market
Low friction user experience = more site visitors, brand affinity, employee productivity
Certification program ensures interoperability and security across your supply chain
Standards based approach future-proofs your authentication investment
Huge cost savings through avoidance of password resets, device provisioning, customer support
Passwordless, second factor and multi factor authentication are accomplished by:
Security key
Facial Recognition
Fingerprint
Voice
Simpler authentication:
Reduces the need to remember and type passwords
Works with the same devices that people use every day
One device works across all services
Resistant to Phishing and Other Common Attacks:
Based on public key cryptography
Keys stay on device
Biometrics if used, never leave device
No linkability between services or accounts
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