In today’s 21st century, our professional and personal lives are moving online. We use several online services daily, creating more pressure to create and remember a strong password. Generally, these passwords are shared across devices and businesses, leading to a high risk of data breach. As per the research, approx. 68% of people use similar passwords for all of their accounts. Of course, complex passwords will be hard to guess and more secure, but they tend to be easily forgotten and face a high risk of being compromised. To overcome this issue, you can say hello to Passkeys and protect your online accounts using it.

This article highlights what passkey is and how to protect your online accounts. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

What is passkey? How do they work?

In simple terms, a passkey is just like a magical key that only you own. However, it helps you unlock your online accounts instead of unlocking the door. Passkeys are different from passwords. Let’s understand it briefly.

 Passkey is made up of private and public cryptography keys. It combines biometric data like fingerprints and face recognition with the digital key to unlock your online account. A public key is stored with the platform/company where you created your online account, whereas a private key is stored on your device. Once you have created the passkey for your account, you don’t need to enter a password to log into your account. In addition to this, passkeys are unique to each account and impossible to crack.

Whenever you log into your account, the cryptography key is stored on your device, and the online service’s cryptography key is exchanged for their keys to do your identity verification. If they match, you will be able to log into your account.  

What benefits do passkeys bring?

Switching to passkeys provides you with the following benefits.

•   There is no need to reset your password, as you don’t have to deal with forgotten passwords. Your fingerprint and face work like a password for you.
•   Passkeys make the login process faster; only a quick scan or tap is required.
•   It will protect your online account through cutting-edge technology, giving you peace of mind.

How do you set up passkeys to protect your online account?

You need to follow the below steps to protect your online account.

•   First, select the device you want to use to set up the passkey. Generally, most laptops and smartphones support biometric authentication. So, ensure your device has a fingerprint scanner and facial recognition feature.
•   Now, navigate to your device’s settings to set up biometric authentication. This step generally includes fingerprint scanning or taking a few photos of your face.
•   Link this passkey to your account. To do so, you need to go to your account’s settings and search for the option to enable passkeys or biometric authentication.
•   If you want to add an additional protection layer, you can use the hardware security key.

How passkeys can secure your online account?

Traditional passwords can be easily guessed, compromised, or stolen, but passkeys provide you with several security layers to secure your online account.

•   It offers biometric authentication, which is unique to you. So no one can replicate it.
•   Passkeys provide device-based security. This means that you would need the physical device you used/own to access passkeys. So, it can create trouble for hackers. They won’t be able to guess or compromise it easily.
•   Most passkey systems include 2FA, which makes unauthorised access impossible.

Which apps and devices support passkeys?

Currently, not all apps support passkeys. Only a few big brands like Microsoft, Google, Paypal, TikTok, Adobe, and Shopify support passkeys, but global support from all the apps is expected shortly.

Concluding Remarks

In summary, passkeys are a much more secure alternative to passwords, but that does not mean you ditch your password manager. The reason is that passkeys are in the transition phase. Right now, not all apps support it. Global adoption will take time as it is not yet the perfect fix. However, in the future, it will eliminate the phishing threat as it is an entirely new way of user authentication.

Hopefully, all your queries related to passkeys are solved. If you still have any questions, you can ask us in the comment section below.