Troy Hunt on Passwords

Troy Hunt has a good essay about why passwords are here to stay, despite all their security problems:

This is why passwords aren't going anywhere in the foreseeable future and why [insert thing here] isn't going to kill them. No amount of focusing on how bad passwords are or how many accounts have been breached or what it costs when people can't access their accounts is going to change that. Nor will the technical prowess of [insert thing here] change the discussion because it simply can't compete with passwords on that one metric organisations are so focused on: usability. Sure, there'll be edge cases and certainly there remain scenarios where higher-friction can be justified due to either the nature of the asset being protected or the demographic of the audience, but you're not about to see your everyday e-commerce, social media or even banking sites changing en mass.

He rightly points out that biometric authentication systems -- like Apple's Face ID and fingerprint authentication -- augment passwords rather than replace them. And I want to add that good two-factor systems, like Duo, also augment passwords rather than replace them.

Hacker News thread.