You can now sign into your Microsoft account without a password

Author: Kyle Wiggers / Source: VentureBeat

Passwords aren’t as effective a means as preventing account break-ins as they might seem. Three out of four people use duplicate passwords, and 21 percent of people use codes that are over 10 years old. (In 2014, among the five most popular passwords were “password,” “123456,” and “qwerty.

”) Two-factor SMS authentication adds a layer of protection, but it isn’t foolproof — hackers can fairly easily redirect text messages to another number.

There’s good news on that front, though, if you’re a Windows user. Microsoft today announced that users can sign into Microsoft accounts on Microsoft’s Edge browser password-free, either by using Windows Hello — the biometrics-based authentication platform built into Windows 10 — or with a FIDO2-compatible device from Yubico, Feitian, or another manufacturer. Alternatively, they can use a phone running the Microsoft Authenticator app.

Password-free login goes live this week in Windows 10 (version 1809) on Outlook.com, Office 365, Skype, OneDrive, Cortana, Microsoft Edge, Xbox Live on the PC, Mixer, the Microsoft Store, Bing, and MSN.com. Alex Simons, corporate vice president at Microsoft’s Identity Division, said that Edge is among the first to implement WebAuthn and CTAP2, and that it supports the “widest array of authenticators” compared to other browsers. He also said that starting next year, the same sign-in experience will come to work and school accounts in Azure Active Directory, and that enterprise customers will be able to preview it before the end of 2018.

“This combination of ease of use, security and broad industry support is going to be transformational,” he said in a statement. “Every month, more than 800 million people use a Microsoft account to create, connect, and share from anywhere to Outlook, Office, OneDrive, Bing, Skype and Xbox Live for work and play. And now they can all benefit from this simple user experience and greatly improved security.”

FIDO2, for the uninitiated, is a standard certified by the nonprofit FIDO Alliance that supports public key cryptography and multifactor authentication — specifically, the Universal Authentication Framework (UAF) and…

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