Onfido Shares Lessons from WEF White Paper on Passwordless Authentication

Onfido has listed some of the key takeaways from the World Economic Forum’s new white paper on passwordless authentication. Onfido was one of the organizations that contributed to the paper, which was released during the recent WEF annual meeting in Davos.

In the paper, the WEF noted that passwords are becoming more and more difficult to manage, with the average consumer now keeping track of more than 191 unique accounts. That makes people more likely to reuse certain passwords, which is an issue because 80 percent of cyberattacks are password-related in some way.

That’s why the WEF and Onfido are promoting passwordless authentication as a potential solution to the problem, one that carries numerous benefits for businesses and private consumers alike. For example, between 20 to 50 percent of all IT help desk calls deal with password resets, and the corporate cost of each request can be as high as $70.

The drain on the economy goes well beyond a few hours of lost productivity. Weak and stolen passwords are the most common cause of data breaches, which carried an average cost of $3.92 million in 2019. Passwordless authentication eliminates some of that risk, while simultaneously offering a more convenient user experience.

Onfido also emphasized the importance of the FIDO Alliance’s efforts to develop trusted authentication standards, which led to the organization’s WebAuthn specification becoming an official Web standard back in March. The white paper highlights five different forms of passwordless authentication, including behavioral analytics, zero-knowledge proofs, security keys, QR codes, and biometrics.

Onfido, of course, is best known as a provider of biometric passwordless solutions. The company has previously provided selfie-based authentication solutions for banks, elections, and other establishments, and received SOC-2 Type 2 certification earlier this year. The certification attests to Onfido’s ability to protect the personal information of its customers.

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February 3, 2020 – by Eric Weiss