May 5 (UPI) -- Tech giants Google, Microsoft and Apple teamed up in a rare show of unity on Thursday to back passwordless logins across devices and platforms, the companies announced.
The three companies said in a joint announcement that they will soon begin to offer passwordless sign-ins via a standard created by FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium.
The changes will be implemented over the coming year, they said.
The goal of the change is making it easier and more secure for users to login to devices and browsers. Often when a user has many sign-in credentials, they simply use the same password over and over, which weakens security.
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Instead of a password, the change may include a fingerprint, face recognition, PIN, or merely having your smartphone in the general vicinity to unlock apps or platforms.
"The complete shift to a passwordless world will begin with consumers making it a natural part of their lives," Alex Simons, Microsoft corporate vice president of identity program management, said in the joint statement.
"By working together as a community across platforms, we can at last achieve this vision and make significant progress toward eliminating passwords."
Google executive and FIDO President Sampath Srinivas said that many apps already support FIDO authentication.
"We applaud Apple, Google and Microsoft for helping make this objective a reality by committing to support this user-friendly innovation," FIDO Executive Director Andrew Shikiar said in the statement.
"The standards developed by the FIDO Alliance and World Wide Web Consortium ... is the type of forward-leaning thinking that will ultimately keep the American people safer online," added Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly.
