The new passwordless technology is taking hold, but passkeys aren’t without their drawbacks
Passkeys have been a common presence in the news recently, as an ever-increasing amount of services are suppoting their use. They are thought to be both safer and more convenient than passwords, which are routinely stolen and used by threat actors to wreak havoc to many businesses.
Apple was one of the first big names to adopt them, followed by the other tech giants, such as Google and Microsoft. All are board-level members of the FIDO Alliance, which sets the technological standards for their use.
And herein lies one of the passkeys’ central problems: since the private portion of the cryptographic key is stored on device, big tech seems to have seized the opportunity to keep their users locked into their respective ecosystems, not making it possible to use them cross-platform. However, the situation does appear to opening up somewhat, but there are still concerns about their entrenchment, as well as some possible safety concerns too.New adopters
For a while, BestBuy, eBay and PayPal were the only prominent consumer services, barring the tech giants, that let users login with passkeys. But recently, others have joined the party, with the likes of X (formerly Twitter), WhatsApp, and GitHub taking them onboard.
Microsoft has also recently announced expanded support for passkeys in Windows 11, and with Apple now allowing passkeys to be managed by third-parties on its new iOS 17 platform, popular password managers 1Password and NordPass have done too.
