What last year's biggest data breaches have taught us about authentication [Q&A]
According to the Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) there were 1.1 billion breaches in the first half of 2024 -- a 490 percent increase over the first half of the year before.
In addition, an enormous and unprecedented rate of credential stuffing and bot attacks have been spearheaded by ChatGPT's debut. All of this means having intelligent and accurate fraud prevention techniques have never been so critical.
Fastmail now supports passkeys
Fastmail has launched a new feature allowing users to create passkeys for their accounts, promising a faster and more secure authentication method compared to traditional passwords. Passkeys address the inherent weaknesses of passwords by using cryptographic keys that offer several advantages over conventional methods.
Passwords, the standard for online authentication, present challenges such as the difficulty in creating secure passwords and vulnerability to phishing attacks. In contrast, passkeys operate on public key cryptography, where a private key creates a signature and a public key that the website can verify. This method provides security benefits like replay resistance, where each login attempt involves a unique challenge from the website, making passkeys resistant to interception. They are also leak-resistant since only the public key can be compromised without being used to forge a login, and they are phishing-proof as passkeys are inherently tied to the website they were created for.