THALES BLOG

Passwordless Authentication without Secrets!

October 11, 2024

Marco Venuti Marco Venuti | IAM Enablement & Acceleration Director More About This Author >

As user expectations for secure and seamless access continue to grow, the 2024 Thales Consumer Digital Trust Index (DTI) research revealed that 65% of users feel frustrated with frequent password resets. This highlights an increasing demand for advanced authentication methods like passkeys and multi-factor authentication (MFA), which provide robust security for most use cases. However, industries reliant on shared devices—such as healthcare, retail, and manufacturing—face unique challenges. These fast-paced environments need a more flexible approach to balance security, speed, and user privacy.

The Challenges of Shared Devices

In industries where shared devices are the norm, such as healthcare workers accessing patient records or retail employees operating point-of-sale systems, security must remain a priority without sacrificing efficiency. Traditional methods, like password resets or multi-factor prompts, slow down workflows and create friction for users who need quick transitions between devices.

For example, in healthcare, constant authentication interruptions can impact both patient care and productivity. Similarly, in retail and manufacturing, delays caused by authentication procedures reduce overall efficiency. These sectors require an authentication solution that delivers fluidity and security without compromising user experience.

Integrating Thales’s User Journey Orchestration with Badge’s Passwordless Authentication without secrets

The Thales OneWelcome Identity Platform offers advanced user journey orchestration, seamless integration, and robust compliance with data privacy regulations like GDPR and CCPA. Its ability to manage complex identity requirements on validation, consent, and progressive profiling for large infrastructures across diverse industries and use cases makes it the ideal to integrate Badge Inc.’s unique "identity without secrets" approach that uses fuzzy extraction, a cryptographic method that consistently derives a secure key from biometric data, eliminating the need to store passwords or personal information. The Thales Consumer Digital Trust Index (DTI) research, reveals that more than four in five (87%) expect some level of privacy rights from the companies they interact with online.

The Growing Demand for Scalable, Secure Shared Device Solutions

The need for scalable, secure solutions for shared device access is skyrocketing as shared devices are the new normal across multiple industry verticals such as healthcare, manufacturing, or retail. CISO and Operation Managers are increasingly attentive to the security and efficiency returns of frictionless onboarding and authentication for professionals working in dynamic, multi-user environments.

This integration improves user experience by allowing for frictionless transitions across devices, reducing costs related to device loss, while ensuring privacy compliance by eliminating the need to store personal data.

  • Streamline user experience: seamless onboarding and access management, with passwordless authentication allows users to move across devices without interruptions, cutting costs by eliminating lost-device issues.
  • Enhanced privacy and security: eliminate the need to store personal information, reducing risk and meeting global privacy standards.
  • Cost savings: Avoid productivity loss and device-related issues with a passwordless approach that eliminates costly credential resets and lost device management.

The industry has key gaps and areas for improvement. At $9.5 trillion, cybercrime is the world's third largest economy1 , with 70% of organizations experiencing significant disruption to their business resulting from a breach.2 According to the IBM 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report, "Breaches involving stolen or compromised credentials took the longest to identify and contain (292 days) of any attack vector," and are among the most prevalent and costliest attack type. By eliminating stored credentials and biometrics, Badge ensures there is nothing to breach.

Account recovery is traditionally highly vulnerable—a weak spot for the industry and a common vector for credential theft. With Badge, there is no credential recovery because there is no credential. Thales is augmenting its identity offering by adding Badge to the integrated solution, authenticating that you are you all along the identity lifecycle.

Thales serves customers around the world with a variety of needs, and therefore optionality is critical. Badge's technology allows organizations to use face, fingerprint, PIN, device characteristics, contextual, and other factors for authentication. A standout feature of Badge is that it maintains high accuracy in recognizing users without increasing errors, and organizations can adjust how strict or lenient the system is, ensuring both security and user convenience.

Improving Shared Device Management with Badge Inc.’s Passwordless Authentication

The integration of Badge Inc.’s unique passwordless authentication enhances identity management for shared devices. The integration allows multiple users to authenticate efficiently, without the delays caused by password resets or complex credential management, ensuring secure, uninterrupted access to shared devices.

In healthcare the integration provides comprehensive IAM capabilities that ensures secure patient and clinician authentication to leading healthcare systems on shared devices without centrally storing biometric templates. In finance and payments, the integration offers robust authentication to secure bank teller, back office, and customer data without requiring added friction and liability such as push notifications to trusted devices. Retail and manufacturing sectors benefit from streamlined operations and improved user experiences across shared devices such as kiosks.

Stay tuned for more updates on how our partnership will drive innovation in IAM. To learn more about how Thales OneWelcome and Badge, Inc. can support your organization, visit us at the Thales booth at Authenticate 2024 Conference, October 14-16, in Carlsbad, CA.

1Bloomberg, Cybersecurity Ventures 2024

2IBM 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report