Apple, Microsoft and Google to support passwordless sign-in standard

Apple, Google and Microsoft today announced plans to expand support for a common passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium.

The new capability will allow websites and apps to offer consistent, secure and easy passwordless sign-ins to consumers across devices and platforms.

The expanded standards-based capabilities will give websites and apps the ability to offer an end-to-end passwordless option. Users will sign in through the same action that they take multiple times each day to unlock their devices, such as a simple verification of their fingerprint or face, or a device PIN.

This new approach protects against phishing and sign-in will be radically more secure when compared to passwords and legacy multi-factor technologies such as one-time passcodes sent over SMS.

There a two new capabilities available for users, firstly, it allow users to automatically access their FIDO sign-in credentials (referred to by some as a “passkey”) on many of their devices, even new ones, without having to re-enroll every account.

Secondly, it enables users to use FIDO authentication on their mobile device to sign-in to an app or website on a nearby device, regardless of the OS platform or browser they are running.

In addition to facilitating a better user experience, the broad support of this standards-based approach will enable service providers to offer FIDO credentials without needing passwords as an alternative sign-in or account recovery method.

These new capabilities are expected to become available across Apple, Google and Microsoft platforms over the course of the coming year.

 Andrew Shikiar, executive director and CMO of the FIDO Alliance said, “Ubiquity and usability are critical to seeing multi-factor authentication adopted at scale, and we applaud Apple, Google and Microsoft for helping make this objective a reality by committing to support this user-friendly innovation in their platforms and products.

“This new capability stands to usher in a new wave of low-friction FIDO implementations alongside the ongoing and growing utilization of security keys - giving service providers a full range of options for deploying modern, phishing-resistant authentication.”

Kurt Knight, senior director of platform product marketing at Apple said, "Working with the industry to establish new, more secure sign-in methods that offer better protection and eliminate the vulnerabilities of passwords is central to our commitment to building products that offer maximum security and a transparent user experience — all with the goal of keeping users’ personal information safe.”

Mark Risher, senior director of product management at Google said, "For Google, it represents nearly a decade of work we've done alongside FIDO, as part of our continued innovation towards a passwordless future.”

Alex Simons, corporate vice president, identity program management at Microsoft said, “ By working together as a community across platforms, we can at last achieve this vision and make significant progress toward eliminating passwords. We see a bright future for FIDO-based credentials in both consumer and enterprise scenarios and will continue to build support across Microsoft apps and services.”