Published in ITProPortal by Raz Rafaeli on August 16, 2017
The Password is Dead
For a vestige of the past, the password has managed to hold on – even though some of the top people in computing said that it had already died over a decade ago.
In one of his more famous predictions, Microsoft founder Bill Gates said that passwords were on the way out already in 2004. Problem is that Gates, for all his wisdom, didn’t tell us what to use to replace passwords.
With all their drawbacks, passwords have remained popular mostly because people are used to them. User experience, it turns out, is a major driver of security for users. To replace passwords, you need not just tight security (any new solution should outdo passwords as a protection system), but a positive user experience as well.
The Great Authenticator
Mobile push-based authentication, which enables users to sign on to services with one action, and without passwords, is perhaps counterintuitively, more effective both in terms of security and user experience. A ‘Great Authenticator’ of this type enables users to access multiple services/domains.
