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No More Passwords for Microsoft Accounts

September 16, 2021

Yesterday was a big news day for Microsoft account users. Microsoft announced that you can now ditch passwords when accessing your Microsoft account. As the Verge pointed out in its post, there are several options for accessing your account if you elect to delete your password. Commercial users have had this option for several months, but it is now an option for all Microsoft accounts. You can elect to use “Microsoft Authenticator app, Windows Hello, a security key, or an SMS / email verification code instead of a password.” It should be pretty obvious that it’s not very bright to use an email verification code to protect your email account. Just saying.

The steps to use something other than a password are pretty simple. Go to account.microsoft.com and select the advanced security options and then turn on passwordless accounts in the advanced section.

The really scary statement from Microsoft’s VP, Vasu Jakkal, was “Weak passwords are the entry point for the majority of attacks across enterprise and consumer accounts. There are a whopping 579 password attacks every second — that’s 18 billion every year.”

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