May 2 is celebrated as World Password Day to spread awareness of best practices of password protection. On that day, Microsoft introduced support for passkeys for all consumers. Microsoft is now rolling out support for Passkey for all consumer accounts. So, consumers can now generate passkeys across devices for logging into a Microsoft account without a password.
“Starting today, you can use a passkey to sign in to Microsoft apps and websites, including Microsoft 365 and Copilot on desktop and mobile browsers,” Microsoft said in a blog post.
Passkey is a new way to log into different websites and apps without entering your username and password. You can use your device’s fingerprint scanner, face scan, or screen lock for login. So, you don’t need to remember complex passwords. Passkeys are stored locally on your device, so they are phishing-proof.
Passkeys are built on WebAuthn technology. It generates two different keys. One is stored on a website, service, or app where you have an account. The other private key is stored on your device to verify your identity. Passkeys work across devices and there’s also a way to reauthenticate your device.
Microsoft customers can now create passkeys by following this link. They can select Face unlock, fingerprint, PIN, or security key for login method with a passkey.
Passkeys have already become the industry standard and have been adopted by big companies like Microsoft, Apple, Google, and more. Passkeys have already become an alternative to passwords for signing in everywhere without entering a password.
The good thing is that Apple and Google have already added support for passkeys to their password vaults. Some popular password managers like 1Password and Dashlane also support Passkey. So, it is easier to manage passkeys and use them across services.
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Microsoft has been trying to push passwordless authentication for years. Microsoft introduced Windows Hello login back in 2015 with Windows 10. This feature allowed users to sign in to a Windows PC with Face, fingerprint, or PIN. In 2018, Microsoft added support for FIDO security keys and introduced passwordless login for Microsoft accounts in 2021.
