Passwords are slowly becoming passé and for good reason. They’re cumbersome, made all the more so by the need to beef up your security with two-factor authentication. This does not diminish the importance of authentication in security, and tech titans have been hard at work honing the future of security known as a passkey. As a member of the FIDO (Fast Identity Online) Alliance,1Password has been working on passkey supportto help customers move beyond the limitations of password technology. The company’s next step is to release passkey support to customers next month.
1Password plans to roll out the feature beginning on June 6 in open beta, allowing users to store their passkeys in the app,The Vergereports. However, the support won’t be widely available at the start; it can only be accessed via 1Password’s browser extension for Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Edge, Arc, and Brave on desktop.
If you want to try out the feature on your phone, you’re out of luck because mobile support for passkeys won’t be available anytime soon. Nevertheless, the company states that it is currently in development, so a mobile rollout will occur at some point. All of this by no means calls for the removal of your master password. Steve Won, 1Password’s chief product officer, told The Verge that you’ll have the option to use a passkey instead of a master password to secure all your passwords beginning in July.
Passkeys are a new type of login credential that isdesigned to replace passwords. They are stored on your device and are accessed using biometric authentication, such as your fingerprint or face. This makes them more secure than passwords, as they cannot be phished or stolen. However, not everyone is ready to give up their passwords just yet. Passkeys are still in their early stages of development, and not all websites and apps support them.
So, even if we’re gradually moving toward a password-free experience, many of theleading password managersthat remember our passwords for us may still be very useful. In the near future, we can count on passkeys replacing the last remaining passwords entirely.
