Microsoft will roll out passwordless sign-in support in the coming weeks, allowing customers to sign in to their Microsoft accounts without using a password.
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The company first enabled commercial customers to deploy passwordless authentication in their environments in March 2021 following a major discovery made in 2020 in which Microsoft reported that over 150 million users were signing in to their Azure Active Directory and Microsoft accounts without using a password.
Traffic to all Microsoft accounts
Starting today, Redmond announced that users are no longer required to have a password on their accounts.
Instead, they can choose between the Microsoft Authenticator app, Windows Hello, a security key, or phone/email verification codes to sign in to Microsoft Edge or Microsoft 365 apps and services.
As Microsoft's Vasu Jakkal added, threat actors use weak passwords as the initial attack vector in most attacks on business and consumer accounts. Microsoft detects 579 password attacks every second, with a total of 18 billion incidents each year.
"One of our recent surveys found that 15 percent of people use their pet's name as a password. Other common responses included family members' names and important dates like birthdays," Jakkal said.
“We also found that 1 in 10 people admitted to reusing passwords on websites and 40% said they have used a specific pattern for their passwords, such as Fall2021, which eventually becomes Winter2021 or Spring2022.”.
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What you should do to avoid using passwords
To start signing in to your Microsoft account without a password, you must first install the Microsoft Authenticator app and link it to your personal Microsoft account.
Next, you need to go to your Microsoft account page, sign in, and enable “Passwordless Account” under Advanced Security Options > Additional Security Options.
The final steps require you to follow the on-screen instructions and approve the notification displayed by the Authenticator app.
More information about using the passwordless login method is available on the Microsoft support website
Information source: bleepingcomputer.com
