Google rolled out passkey for personal Google Account in early May and now the company has expanded it to the Google Workspace and Google Cloud accounts.
“Starting today, in an open Beta, more than 9 million organizations can allow their users to sign in to Google Workspace and Google Cloud accounts using passkeys instead of passwords,” Google said in a blog post.
Passwords are vulnerable to theft and phishing attacks and these attacks are growing in scale and sophistication. Passkeys are a secure and simpler alternative to passwords. Users can sign in to their accounts with a fingerprint, face recognition, or other screen lock across phones, laptops, or desktops.
Passkeys follow a common standard and work on many browsers and operating systems such as Android, MacOS, iOS, and Windows. Users don’t have to memorise passkeys, so they are less likely to be stolen.
Google data has shown that passkeys are two times faster and four times less error-prone than passwords and the company has now expanded its availability to businesses, schools and governments.
“We championed the development of physical security keys and their standardization under the FIDO Alliance. As a generally simpler and more secure alternative to passwords, passkeys represent the culmination of this work to bring phishing-resistant technology to billions of people worldwide,” Google added.
Google has started rolling out passkeys for users and its controls for Workspace administrators. It will reach all the users over the next few weeks. After receiving this feature, Workspace admins can allow their users in their organization to sign in to their accounts with passkeys.
“Starting today, we are gradually enabling passkeys for users and controls for Workspace administrators over the next few weeks,” Google said.
By default, this setting is not enabled so Workspace users cannot skip passwords but they can set up passkeys as a two-step verification method. If you are a Workspace admin and want to allow users in your organisation to skip passwords and use passkeys for sign-in, you can do it by following these steps.
A step-by-step guide on how to enable skip password for Workspace account users
Step 1: Log in to your Google Admin console.
Step 2: In the Admin console, go to Menu and select Security.
Step 3: Select Authentication and then Passwordless.
Step 4: Select Skip passwords.
Step 5: If you want to enable users to bypass password challenges, mark the Allow users to skip passwords at sign-in by using passkeys box.
Step 6: Select Save.