Fragmentation, Lack of Adoption Impede Uptake of PasswordLess Logins

pcmag.com:

Last year, Apple, Google, and Microsoft made a combined push to kill the password. The result gave us passkeys, a new way to log in to apps and websites that relies on the user’s smartphone or laptop to authenticate the login. 

So naturally, you may be wondering why you’re still using passwords to sign in to many, if not all, your websites. At RSA, Google Product Manager Christiaan Brand talked about the challenges facing passkey, and why it could take a while before the technology becomes mainstream. 

“Most of your users today already have the tech on their systems to use passkeys, now it’s just a question of when do we start to roll out,” he said. 

Essentially, Apple, Google, and Microsoft have laid out the infrastructure to support passkeys across Chrome, Android, iOS, macOS, and Windows. But there's a lack of adoption in the industry, in addition to fragmentation over how each operating system implements them.

Google itself still pushes consumers to sign in with passwords and multi-factor authentication, although there is a passkey-like option called “Use your phone to sign in.” However, Brand said Google is looking to make passkeys a more prominent login method.

“Google will put its money where its mouth is by hopefully starting to enable passkeys for users to sign into our own stuff at some point,” Brand said on the sidelines of the RSA Conference in San Francisco. “That’s the obvious question. We’ve built everything into Chrome and Android. Where can I sign into a Google account using a passkey?”

With passkeys, a smartphone or laptop will store a unique and private cryptographic key that can be used to authenticate the login into a select website or app. No password data is ever exchanged. Instead, the website or