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In this series, Microsoft identity team members share their reasons for loving passwordless authentication (and why you should too!). Today, Sue Bohn continues the series.
Hello,
Today, I’m sharing with you my second reason to love passwordless authentication. Last time, I shared how passwordless authentication meets security assurance guidelines using crypto keys, to give you more peace of mind. This week, I’m going to talk about the real cost of passwords on productivity and how this solution addresses it.
A study by one of our passwordless partners found that the average user spends more than 12 minutes each day entering or resetting passwords—that’s almost an hour every month! Multiplying that hourly loss across an organization with 15,000 members results in more than 160,000 hours of lost productivity and thousands of support calls, all due to managing passwords.
Going passwordless can seem daunting, so we’ve created a powerful tool to help you get started. The passwordless wizard within the Microsoft 365 admin portal helps organizations determine which devices and passwordless methods fit their organization and existing infrastructure. If you’re looking for the easiest place to start with your passwordless deployment, Windows Hello for Business is baked right into Windows and requires no extra hardware.
If your employees have PCs with biometric hardware (think fingerprint scanners, Intel RealSense or other 3D cameras), this is our premier Windows Hello for Business experience. Using biometrics, employees can log in to their PCs and enjoy single sign-on to their local and cloud-based resources, all without ever entering a password. Windows Hello logs you in 3x faster than a password. Those who don’t have biometrics can still take advantage of these features through the use of a PIN.
“But Sue, isn’t a PIN worse than a password?” If a user’s password is compromised, that password can be used anywhere in your digital estate where that person has access. When someone sets up a PIN within Windows Hello for Business, that PIN is tied to their specific device and can’t be used to gain access anywhere else. Once they log in with their PIN, users get the same single sign-on experience without ever having to deal with a password.
Going passwordless means typing a password suddenly becomes very strange for your users, which can make it easier for them to recognize phishing attempts, too. If a password isn’t ever entered into a device from provisioning on day one, it makes it that much harder for a malicious actor to capture a user’s password. Add this to 160,000 hours of productivity and a sizable reduction in password-related help desk calls, all using what’s already built-in to Windows 10. This might just be the easiest decision you have to make today.
Check out the other posts in this series:
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