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Passkeys, the latest biometric authentication standard looking to replace passwordsis now available in stable versions of Google Chrome on desktop and Android devices.
Announcing the release in a Chromium blog post (opens in new tab)Google reaffirmed the common belief in tech circles that passwords are vulnerable to data breaches, phishing attacks, and simple passwords that are reused extensively instead of storing strong data generated passwords in a password manager.
In the future, password keys will be synced in Chrome on Android through Google Password Manager or other password managers that support it.
The future of passwords
Passkeys sit alongside other security principles that compliment or completely do away with passwords, such as No trustwhatever belongs to multifactor authentication. They are already available on iPhones and iPads, with life started integrated into iOS.
And like the iOS integration, Google Chrome allows you to use access keys stored on nearby mobile devices with login requests on desktop devices.
In its announcement blog post, Google claimed that this is possible because access keys are developed according to “industry standards” that are in addition to the FIDO Alliance (opens in new tab) and W3C (opens in new tab)although it didn’t work out.
Chrome 108 marks the first appearance of passkeys in a stable release, but as Tech Radar Pro reported in those days access keys have available since October 2022 (opens in new tab) in Chrome Canary, the experimental version of the company’s browser designed for programmers and avid enthusiasts.
Tech Radar Pro recently reported that both 1Password and Bitwarden are making the jump to the new standard, without completely phasing out passwords.
Much of the appeal of access keys is control. For the same reason, it is important to be able to easily track the access codes for your user accounts password managers have grown in popularity in recent years: it allows users to stay safe online without having to easily summon their authentication credentials.
To that end, all of your access keys can now be viewed and sorted in Chrome for Windows and macOS.
As we’ve also noted extensively before, passkeys will take time to embed as the dominant authentication method online.
Web developers must implement passkey creation manually, and while many may not see the urgency to do so right now, the recent conscious push from several tech companies to support passkey storage could turn the tide in 2023 and beyond.