Microsoft has been moving away from the use of old-fashioned passwords to sign into its services for a long time. It has introduced technologies like Windows Hello, Microsoft Authenticator, FIDO2 security keys, and more to get people to have to come up with strong passwords. Today, the company announced, as part of the annual World Password Day, another milestone towards that goal.
In a post on the Microsoft Security blog, it announced that all Microsoft consumer accounts now support the use of passkeys. This support will extend to signing into your Microsoft account on Windows, Google, and Apple platforms. It can use biometric methods like your face or fingerprint or a device PIN.
If you have a Microsoft consumer account, you can set up your device for passkey support by going to this website. You can then select how you want to unlock your device: with a passkey PIN, your face, or your fingerprint.
Currently, you can use passkeys to sign into your Microsoft account, including services like Microsoft 365 and Copilot, on desktop and mobile browsers. The company said that passkey sign-in support for Microsoft's mobile apps will be added sometime in the coming weeks. You can learn more about this new security measure on Microsoft's support site.
In another post on the Microsoft Entra blog, the company revealed that it is also adding support for device-bound passkeys in the Microsoft Authenticator iOS and Android apps as a public preview for business customers. The blog stated:
Instead of provisioning separate devices, high-security organizations can now configure Entra ID to let employees sign-in using their existing phone and their device-bound passkey. Users get a familiar phone interface, including biometrics or local lockscreen PIN or password, while their organizations meet strict security requirements because users can’t sync, share, or recover any device-bound passkey hosted in Microsoft Authenticator.
It will be interesting to see how quickly passkey support will be adopted by Microsoft account holders.
Editors note: Initially this article was published claiming that today was "World Passport Day" in the headline and article body; neither the author or editor saw this mistake until two hours after the article went online, we apologize for the mistake.
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