Microsoft and the industry have been promoting the transition from traditional password login methods to passwordless login methods in recent years. From a security perspective, as long as you don't have a password, you don't have to worry about password leaks caused by being dragged to the database, so this can greatly improve security. There are currently several ways to switch to a passwordless login method. Among them, the passwordless login method of industry peers uses a passkey, while Microsoft currently mainly uses MFA click confirmation based on Microsoft Authenticator.
Of course, the Microsoft account itself also supports configuration as a pass key login. In order to promote other websites to switch to password-less login, Windows 11 can also create and save pass keys (requires 22H2 and subsequent versions).
Today Microsoft announced that in order to further expand the use of pass keys on Windows devices and services, Microsoft will work with password manager developers including Bitwarden and 1Password to enable pass keys to be synchronized across devices.
Pass keys currently created on Windows 11 do not support cross-platform and cloud synchronization. Microsoft does not seem to have plans to add cross-platform synchronization support for pass keys in Microsoft Authenticator, but Microsoft can solve this problem by working with third parties.
Microsoft will launch a new set of API services in Windows 11. Users can seamlessly call the pass keys saved in the password manager in Windows 11. That is, the pass keys created by users on mobile terminals or other devices can also be synchronized to Windows 11 for use.
Although Microsoft did not mention it, Blue Dot speculates that subsequent keys created and saved by Windows 11 may also be synchronized through the password manager, which can achieve Microsoft's goal of jointly improving the security of logging in using pass keys.
With this kind of function, users can better use pass keys in non-browser scenarios. After all, password managers now have browser extensions, and it is very convenient to use pass keys in the browser.
Finally, Microsoft has also considered the issue of pass key synchronization created by Windows 11. In the future, Microsoft will launch Windows 11 pass key synchronization based on the Microsoft account system, so that users can at least directly use existing pass keys to log in on different Windows 11 devices without relying on a third-party password manager.