Passwordless authentication

Passwordless authentication:

How many of us are tired of remembering multiple passwords all the time? How many of us are guilty of reusing passwords or writing them down? May be all of us? 🙂 Almost every site needs a password and if a person on an average visits 20 sites per day and he/she is required to enter a password for at least 5 of them – and if all of them have to be different, it is still a lot to remember with the lower case, upper case, special character limitations of password rules!

What if passwords were removed from the scene – how will life be for us? 🙂 This is where the concept of ‘passwordless authentication’ steps in…

Overall a person might have to remember around 200 passwords and this figure might double by the year 2023!! (Reference:

How many passwords can you remember? Get ready to remember more (techxplore.com))

The implementation relating to passwords is also not easy.

There have been many, many terms on the Internet related to passwords – password fatigue, password spraying attack, password managers, browsers requesting us to store the passwords and more.

What is passwordless authentication?

Authentication, by now most of us know is the process of “proving that we are who we are”.

Since working with passwords is cumbersome after a while, the concept of passwordless authentication ensures that a user can be authenticated without a password.

How can passwordless authentication be implemented?

Passwordless authentication ensures that the user is authenticated by means of

1. OTP (one time passwords that is sent to the user’s mobile device)
2. Biometrics (facial scan, retinal scan, fingerprint or more)
3. magic links via email (a link will be sent on the registered email address of the person which when clicked will authenticate the person)

Which is more secure?

Hackers are experts at cracking the different types of passwords. There are brute force attacks, dictionary attacks, password spraying attack and more.

As of today, a passwordless authentication, is more secure than the traditional password system.

However, that is not to say, it is absolutely fool proof and cannot be hacked in any way. For any passwordless authentication to succeed , it must be paired with 2FA or two-factor authentication.

What is the future?

Will passwords just vanish from our lives altogether?

For the time being, my guess is that traditional passwords will not vanish instantly and entirely. They might slowly be replaced with passwordless authentication as the implementation and acceptance of this new technology increases.