After years of supporting passwordless sign-in to Windows and even allowing users to remove passwords from their accounts, Microsoft is taking the biggest step toward a password-free future. It will now ask people signing up for new accounts to default to using only more secure methods, such as push notifications and security keys.
Microsoft’s new password-free initiative is accompanied by a newly launched optimized sign-in window design with redistributed steps that improve the process of signing in without a password and using a key in the first place.
With today’s changes, Microsoft is renaming World Password Day to World Key Day and promises to continue its key adoption efforts over the next year. Last year, the company already introduced keys to access user accounts. Microsoft claims that “nearly a million keys are registered every day,” and that key users have a 98% success rate when logging in, compared to 32% for password-based accounts.
