Microsoft to Eliminate the Use of Passwords in 2021, This is How they Will Do it

 There's a blog post that stated that 80% of cyber attacks were aimed towards passwords with every 250 to 300 accounts being hacked everyday.

 

This was what made Microsoft to completely change the way we unlock our smartphones and laptops when they discussed about their efforts in moving towards a passwordless future and its intentions to reach that stage in 2021.

Here was the company statement;

"In November 2019 at Microsoft Ignite, we shared that more than 100 million people were already using Microsoft’s passwordless sign-in each month. In May of 2020, just in time for World Password Day, that number had already grown to more than 150 million people and the use of biometrics to access work accounts is now almost double what it was then. We’ve drawn strength from our customers’ determination this year and are set to make passwordless access a reality for all our customers in 2021.”

With the new UX and API's for managing FIDO2 security keys, it will help customers develop custom solutions and tools and they also plan to release a converged registration portal in the year 2021. This is to enable the users manage their passwordless credentials through the "My Apps'portal".

From the research they made, the firm said the rate of passwordless usuage in Azure Active Directory went up by 50% for Windows Hello for Business, passwordless phone sign in with Microsoft Authenticator and FIDO2 security keys.The number of consumers using Windows Hello to sign in Windows 10 devices instead of password increased from 69.4% to 84.7% in the year 2020.

Although it is a new thing for Microsoft to work on a passwordless future because they have been trying to bring more insight to this transition for years. For instance, in the month of February, 2020, they announced  the preview of Azure Active Directory Support for FIDO2 security keys in hybrid environments.

With the introduction of FIDO2, it helped users with security keys for them to gain access to their hybrid Azure Active Directory which provides secured access to on-premises and cloud resources with a strong hardware backed public and private key credential.

In order to summarize, I would add that apart from Microsoft, Apple is currently working on this feature.