FIDO Alliance is an open industry association whose mission is to “help reduce the world’s over-reliance on passwords.” Some of its founders are companies such as PayPal and Lenovo. I find it interesting that they have launched new UX guidelines. These guidelines aim to bring leaders in the industry together to move away from passwords for authentication and more so into practices such as “USB security dongles, fingerprint readers, Trusted Platform Modules and more.” As technology continues to develop I wonder if enough decision makers and corporations come together to join this alliance, would it be possible to change user experience holistically in the future.
From another perspective, Lyly Newman shared her perspective on how passwords are “not dead yet.” She found that even though more and more companies are trying to develop passwordless worlds there are two main challenges with this idea:
- Passwords are familiar and ubiquitous
- Device usage affects change
There is a lack of education to break those habits and gear away from the dependance of passwords. I think it was interesting to see that although some companies have adopted the feature of having passwordless security, they are having issues with people utilizing these benefits. Additionally a lot of people do not have the latests devices that sometimes are required with these features.
I think it will take more time to create an strategy that will fully enable these changes permanently. But then again, things in the industry can change quite rapidly.
What would be the implications and consequences of making such a tremendous change in the industry? Will this new technology prove to be the answer to phishing and privacy threats?
Can you imagine a world without passwords?
Sources:
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/24/wouldbe_passwordkiller_fido_alliance_aims/
https://fidoalliance.org/UX-guidelines/
https://www.wired.com/story/passwords-not-dead-yet-authentication/
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