Microsoft Phases Out Passwords In Favor Of Passkeys For New Account Signups

There is a good chance that if you are signing up a new account on Microsoft, you won’t be asked to provide a password anymore – this is the software giant’s latest move to adopt passkey login by default for new accounts, which aims to improve account security.

Microsoft Moves To Passkeys

In case you’re not familiar, passkey is a newer and safer method to log into online services, as it doesn’t require a hard-to-remember password that often requires you to have a specific combination of letters, numbers, and even symbols. Passkey-based logins simply use your biometrics for verification – the data is significantly harder to be stolen, as the authentication process is done on-device.

There’s also the added benefit that using a passkey is significantly faster than password sign-ins. Microsoft says a password sign-in (along with 2FA) takes 69 seconds on average, while passkeys slashed the time down to just 8 seconds; the sign-in success rate is also tripled as a result (32% to about 98%), as you don’t waste time recalling which password you used or using a smartphone as the second authentication factor to confirm a sign-in.

This is certainly a big step in eliminating passwords altogether, as the current method is very susceptible to data breaches, which can be especially problematic if the passwords are not encrypted. Moving past the password era means we no longer have to worry about complicated (and often frustrating) practices including updating passwords every few months, or performing password resets once in a while for the account left dormant.

Pokdepinion: A small but very important step.