EMCSC founder co-authors passkey article for The Conversation
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The founder of East Midlands Cyber Security Cluster (EMCSC) has co-authored an article in The Conversation.
The article – entitled What’s the difference between passwords and passkeys? It’s not just the protection they provide explains how passkeys work, why they’re more secure than passwords, and the challenges still facing their adoption.
It has been jointly authored by Paul Haskell-Dowland, Professor of Cyber Security Practice at Edith Cowan University, and Dr Ismini Vasileiou, founder of EMCSC, and Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science and Informatics at De Montfort University.
The Conversation is a global network of nonprofit media outlets publishing news, analysis, and commentary written by academics and researchers working with professional journalists. Its mission is to make academic knowledge accessible to the public through clear, evidence-based journalism.
The article sets out how passkeys rely on public-key cryptography, generating a public key shared with the website and a private key stored securely on a user’s device. When logging in, a challenge from the website is signed using the private key – a process only authorised through biometrics like fingerprints or facial recognition.
Unlike passwords, passkeys cannot be stolen through phishing or reused across sites, since each one is unique per service. This method eliminates the need to memorise passwords and resists most traditional hacking attempts.
However, the article notes that widespread adoption remains limited due to technical compatibility between platforms. As device ecosystems evolve, passkeys are expected to replace passwords as a simpler and safer authentication method.
You can read the article in full here.