Recently at WWDC21, Apple said that it plans to move beyond passwords by developing a Passkey feature. This feature will allow users to use Face ID and Touch ID-based account authentication on behalf of a password. The event began with apple saying,
Move beyond passwords
Despite their prevalence, passwords inherently come with challenges that make them poorly suited to securing someone’s online accounts. Learn more about the challenges passwords pose to modern security and how to move beyond them. Explore the next frontier in account security with secure-by-design, public-key-based credentials that use the Web Authentication standard. Discover in this technology preview how Apple is approaching this standard in iOS 15 and macOS Monterey.
WWDC21 “Move Beyond Passwords” Event Details
According to Apple engineer Garrett Davidson, Passkey will store a new web authentication credential directly in the iCloud keychain. This passkey will be used instead of a password for account creation and login, with one-tap login. Further, when a user creates an account using a Passkey, there is no password to deal with. Users can access the account with just a login and authentication through Biometrics. All the Apple devices will handle the generation and storage of the unique passkey used for the site, so login is just a matter of entering a username and authentication.
Apple believes that Passkeys are more secure than a password and two-factor authentication, as they are end-to-end encrypted and synced across all of your Apple devices, thanks to iCloud Keychain. Since everything is stored in iCloud Keychain, credentials are preserved even if Apple devices are lost or stolen.
Also Read: Apple’s Latest iOS 15 Updates: Personalized Notifications, Live Text Camera, and More
Also, Apple will talk with partners at FIDO and the World Wide Web Consortium about a wider solution that would allow users to eliminate passwords across non-Apple devices. At the end of the event, Apple added that this is the first step of multiyear to eliminate passwords.
Passkeys can be seen in greater detail in Apple WWDC 2021 “Move beyond passwords”.
