My Microsoft Account goes Passwordless

I suddenly realised it's been a while since I typed in my password to access my Microsoft account. This is partly because my browser caches information but also because the security model of Microsoft Accounts has changed. Microsoft send you a notification or can send you an SMS rather than ask you for a password. 

My current Windows laptop has an infra-red sensor so that it can do face identification using Windows Hello. If that fails, I can use a pin. 

If you want to go passwordless then you will depend on these biometric devices. Your face, fingerprint, or a pin. It has been an aim of the leading technology firms to ditch passwords for some time. The process is reaching a point to which tech is doing it across devices. 

At the centre of this is FIDO. The Federation of Identity Online (FIDO) is a decade old group that has promoted a new way of securely authenticating people on online services. It has onboard Apple, Microsoft, Google, PayPal, Meta, Amazon and more. They don't specify a product you must use to login to services but have certifications. 

The "How Fido Works" pages explain the role of their certified encryption technology. 

The latest iteration of this being Passkeys. The Apple variant of this "Apple Passkeys" being recently promoted as if the technology was invented by Apple in a typically Apple way. Whereas Passkeys itself can be used by any of the FIDO members.

I am someone who uses a range of technology, so I am really pleased that Passkeys is cross platform. There is a good demonstration of how this works and it's worthwhile that people interested in the subject do have a look.




Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Powershell Symlink to Onedrive

Image
I have more than one PC. To be precise, and overly pedantic, 3 Windows 10 laptops. All are slightly different and of various ages. One I use with a Windows 10 Insider Build to keep up with the next thing coming down the pipeline. On each, I do a bit of Powershell . Powershell is the latest generation of Windows command line tools. The Linux enthusiast would look down on the Windows command line of whatever generation but Microsoft has always provided command line tools. In the early days MSDOS was a command line OS. It did little but create directories (folders), copy, move or delete files. It ran “command.com” which some said was just a basic file system manager and way of loading programs into memory. It wasn’t difficult to disagree. Developers brought out alternatives to this such as 4DOS , literally “for dos”, by JP Software . They also produced 4NT, which enhance the Windows NT command processor and 4OS2. The latter was for the IBM OS2 Operating System of the late 80s and ea
Read more

Being progressive rather than universal

Image
Microsoft was not short of ambition for its tiled interface and One Windows strategy . Microsoft was doing what no other tech firm had done - uniting mobile to desktop/laptop PCs in one experience. Apple had two OSs available - IOS for phone/tablet and OSX for its desktop/laptop users. They were different and had different interfaces. Google had two OSs - Android for phone/tablet and ChromeOS for its Chromebook devices. Of course, even One Windows doesn't mean exactly the same OS but it does mean components have such similarity that the interface appears the same to users and, with little modification, apps can run on all platforms. Unfortunately, the app platform UWP (Universal Windows Platform) was hobbled from day one. Microsoft had a poor quality application store, ever-changing developer tools and standards and a Store that only worked (on the PC side) for Windows 8 and latterly Windows 10. While people used legacy versions of Windows such as Windows 7 and XP t
Read more

Identity as the new security boundary

 Not so long ago a PC was safe behind a firewall. The idea was that the physical infrastructure of a network would be enough. Anti-virus and anti-malware products sat on PCs to protect users. Then hybrid working came along. Digital nomads who could connect to networks from anywhere. New startups had users connecting to web based applications. People were bringing their own devices, tablets, phones, projectors and so on into the workplace. Security has now started looking at people. Microsoft call this zero-trust. You don’t just trust someone because they can login. You have systems that secure identity itself. There are three steps to identity security.  1.The credentials that give you authorisation. For most people this is an account identity and password. Often the identity is an email address or some public identity. This leaves the account secured by password. The strength and complexity of the password protecting authentication. 2. Authorization is the next step. What you can a
Read more