Passwords are insecure because they can be phished, stolen
and once compromised, they can be used to access your account information from
anywhere in the world. They are also frustrating to deal with because, and I'm
sure we've all had experiences with this. It's tough to remember complicated
passwords across all of our different accounts. Our goals is to provide our
users with a secure, but at the same time delightful way to sign in to Windows
and access your Cloud account information. This can include your Microsoft
account e-mail, synced photos, and other personalized settings. Because we
recognize that passwords are insecure and in general are huge hassle to deal
with, for Microsoft account users on new devices, passwords are now totally
gone from Windows sign-in experiences, such as the lock screen, settings and
other app sign-in experiences.
Instead, users will
use Windows Hello to sign-in to Windows with their smile, a fingerprint or a
PIN, depending on their device capabilities. Also, if you have the latest
Windows Update on your device, you can sign in with your Microsoft account and
go passwordless by toggling "Require Windows Hello sign in for Microsoft
accounts" in settings. Now, we're big fans of Windows Hello on our
security team, because it provides users with a fast and at the same time,
really secure way to sign in. Unlike a password, which can be used from
anywhere in the world, a Windows Hello credential is specific to your Windows
10 device, so even if someone were to get your Windows Hello PIN, it's
completely useless to them without your Windows 10 device as well. I'll now
pass it over to my teammate Bob to show you what a passwordless Windows 10
experience looks like.
We are going to show you the Windows 10 passwordless
experience with my Microsoft account. So let's say my friend Alice is going to
share her device with me. So she would do this by going to Settings, go into
the Family & other users section, and add in my account to her device. So
she'd enter my address in and allow me to sign in for the first time. Since I'm
on a passwordless device, I see that I have a single sign-in option here, so I
click, and this allows me to use the Microsoft Authenticator mobile app to sign
in for the first time. I click the button to send a notification, solve the
security challenge on the Authenticator mobile app, and now I'm ready to set up
Windows Hello. Setup my face. I'm asked to create a PIN, and now I'm off to the
races using my Windows 10 device without having to use my password. We can see
that when I go to unlock the device, password is also not an option, just my
face or PIN and now I'm able to use my device as normal.
For example, going to Outlook and checking my e-mail and
even check in my OneDrive and never having to use my password and that's Bob
living in a passwordless world. >> We hope you found this video helpful
and learned how you can improve your device sign-in security by going
passwordless with Windows Hello, and eliminating passwords from your Windows
experiences.
