Information Technology Security

By Chris Smith, BGR The first Thursday of May each year is World Password Day, which explains all the password-related announcements we saw this week. First, 1Password 8 for Mac launched with a few big new features. Then, Google started rolling out its Google Assistant password-changing feature. More importantly, Apple, Google, and Microsoft have announced plans to support passwordless sign-in . That last one is a massive cross-platform initiative that will bring us closer to killing passwords. In turn, this could significantly boost the security of online accounts, making them a lot harder to hack. It’ll take some time for websites and apps to support passwordless sign-in. But Google already gave us an idea of how it’ll all work. Proper password practices can help prevent hacks right now. You don’t need passwordless sign-in options if you’re already using unique, long passwords in connection with a password manager like 1Password or LastPass. These passwords are much harder to hack, e...

By Katie Smith, Paul Gerke, News Nation Now Apple, Google and Microsoft announced plans on Thursday to eliminate passwords and replace them with other secure sign-in methods. The announcement came just before World Password Day, which is recognized annually on the first Thursday of May. It highlights the use of safe password habits, but some major tech companies say password-only authentication is of the biggest security problems on the web. “Fundamentally, what we’re doing is letting you use your everyday device — the same thing that you do multiple times a day — to unlock your device now to log in, in a way that is just leaps and bounds more secure than anything that you’re doing today,” said Megan Shamas, a spokesperson for FIDO, the authentication company leading the charge. Together, Apple, Google and Microsoft plan to follow a standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium . That means that websites and apps could offer an “end-to-end passwordless op...