Passwordless authentication is no longer a dream of the distant future. For consumers, everyday technologies such as Apple Touch ID and Face ID and Windows Hello allow users to access their devices password free. And for the workforce, technologies like fingerprint and card readers and mobile authenticator apps help to provide a passwordless experience.
Leaving passwords behind is an important step towards better security and identity access management (IAM), and it’s equally important to strengthen authentication by taking into account the context of every login request.
The question is, how do we get to the point of deploying passwordless authentication? Implementing multi-factor authentication (MFA) is a great foundation for ultimately deploying passwordless. Secure factors such as FIDO2.0/WebAuthn and mobile authenticator apps that support biometric authentication will put you on a path to eventually deploy passwordless authentication company wide. These secure factors, coupled with login context, will allow you to forego the requirement for a password in the authentication process.
This is where Okta can help. Okta’s integrated Single Sign-On and Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication solutions allow organizations to include risk evaluation derived from context (user, location, device, network and more) in the access decision—including passwordless authentication.
