Web Directions Year round learning for product, design and engineering professionals

The state of passwordless auth on the web

Can we get rid of passwords yet? They make for a poor user experience and users are notoriously bad with them. The advent of WebAuthn has brought a passwordless world closer, but where do we really stand?

In this talk we’ll explore the current user experience of WebAuthn and the requirements a user has to fulfil for them to authenticate without a password. We’ll also explore the fallbacks and safeguards we can use to make the password experience better and more secure. By the end of the session you’ll have a vision for how authentication could look in the future and a blueprint for how to build the best auth experience today.

Phil Nash

Phil is a developer evangelist for Twilio and a Google Developer Expert living in Melbourne, Australia. He loves working with Ruby or JavaScript to build web applications and tools to help developers. He once helped build a website that captured the world’s favourite sandwich fillings. He has too many GitHub repositories.

Away from the keyboard, Phil listens to ska punk, hangs out with his miniature dachshund (also called Ruby), and is on a mission to discover the world’s best beers.

Phil tweets at @philnash and you can find him elsewhere online at https://philna.sh