As long as we’ve been using the internet, and way before that, we have been authenticating through some sort of username and password combination. It has become the standard. With the ever-increasing number of web-apps, we’re seeing more and more data breaches as well. What if we could build our authentication processes in a way the user doesn’t need a password?

In this talk, I will give a quick overview of the past, present, and future of authentication. From basic authentication to passwordless biometric authentication using the web authentication API, and everything in between. The audience does not need any specific knowledge as this talk will not go into implementation details but aims to give a view of what’s to come in terms of authentication.

Why? Authentication is one of the fundamentals of modern applications. We still rely on a system of passwords which has been used since the Roman empire. If we could eliminate the weakest part of the authentication process, the password, we might be able to make it more secure.