Passwordless authentication: The next frontier in security

Today, passwords are the main gateway to growing online services and the “crown jewels” of any organisation. Passwords are shared secrets managed centrally and known to the system as well as the user. Ensuring the security of passwords is the responsibility of both the user and the system, and it requires both to follow complex policies introduced by security teams that manage password complexity, expiry, recovery, etc. For the end user, passwords introduce the added burden of adhering to complex rules to be unbreachable. It also involves undertaking complex verification processes if the user forgets the password. An individual user, on average, has 22 accounts and reuses passwords for 16 of them. Per Gartner, “By 2025, more than 50 percent of the workforce and more than 20 percent of customer authentication transactions will be passwordless.”

Passwordless authentication eliminates the root cause of user friction and the weakest link in security. It eliminates the challenges of remembering, storing, and transmitting passwords and adhering to complex rules when setting or resetting passwords. It offers a world without passwords, combined with improved security and a better user experience.