Businesses could ditch passwords for new cryptographic key system

For years, major players in the tech sector have talked up the possibility of a passwordless future. Regular readers of IT Pro know using passwords alone isn’t the most secure way to protect your information.

The question remains, however: What would a passwordless security system look like, and when will the technology be ready to make it happen?

Now, Unbound Tech, a blockchain cybersecurity firm that focuses on cryptographic key management and protection, is launching a new login system it calls the “Crypto-of-Things.”

It’s a decentralized key-management system designed to replace standard passwords, hardware tokens and software-generated one-time passwords, the company announced.

The new login system will be marketed to businesses using those methods. The Crypto-of-Things platform is designed to secure high-risk operations and authenticate transaction approvals without the typical security, usability and cost trade-offs that come with those methods, the company said.

“Unbound’s CoT leverages our advanced software that seamlessly integrates and leverages a business’s existing security policies while providing a unified interface with the highest degree of security for all types of devices,” said Unbound Tech’s co-founder and CEO, Yehuda Lindell.

The cryptographic system can also be used to access blockchain wallets.

This new login platform stores cryptographic keys in a decentralized way across multiple devices, ensuring a key can be secured anywhere at any time, the company said. The cryptographic data never exists in complete form in any one place.

Although the tech sector has explored passwordless concepts for years, Lindell asserted the adoption of password-free techniques has been slow because software-only solutions aren’t secure enough, and hardware-only solutions lead to bad user experiences and operations problems.

It’s well-established that standard passwords are far from secure — although most people remain unaware of this. These days, passwords are typically easy to crack and are an antiquated way of protecting an account.