What a passwordless future could look like

​It might not be something you ask yourself often, but how much time do you spend each year updating your passwords for each of your devices or online accounts? Or getting locked out of those accounts and having to create new passwords on-the-fly (that you’ll inevitably forget and get locked out again)? If your answer to that question is “not a lot” then you either live life as a digital nomad, or there is a good chance you have some very basic passwords that you might share between multiple accounts.

While we’re all drowning in passwords, the IT industry is already making leaps and bounds towards a passwordless future. These days Apple, Google, and Microsoft all either uitilise facial recognition, or have their own 2FA (two factor authentication) processes that will prompt you to unlock an additional device. The tech giants know that most consumers are sitting on top of an unsecure house of cards when it comes to their passwords. But for the time being, passwords are an unavoidable part of living in the digital world. All we can do is navigate it as safely and securely as possible.

The best thing you can do right now to protect all of your accounts is to create bespoke, complicated strings of illegible code, or passphrases (entire sentences used as passwords) that are unique to each and every account. The only problem with that is, it’s then impossible to remember all of those different passwords at the drop of a hat when you’re trying to access the accounts.

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One of the worst things you can do is write all your passwords down in a notebook. Credit: Judit Peter

The future that we’re all looking forward to though, has no passwords, no frustrating security loops and account resets. And while we’re not there yet, there is a way to bring your daily password total down to just the one. These days we have encrypted password managers. These essentially act as a digital vault to secure all of your different passwords across all of your devices, all under a single master password. That means you can have super long, complex passwords for all of your accounts (some password managers will even generate them for you) and not have to remember them all.

Password managers, particularly those with browser extensions and connected smartphone apps, can save you so much time by storing all of your passwords when you submit them, and automatically filling out password fields whenever you access sites. There are a heap of them on the market, but they can vary dramatically in price and feature set. Bitdefender Password Manager is a popular option, and comes with the strongest known cryptographic algorithms available. It also gives you that autofill option, and is multi-platform so it can store and organize all your passwords across all devices.

While there are many fully featured password managers available on the market, Bitdefender Password Manager comes as a part of Bitdefender Premium Security package, which bundles it in with all of Bitdefender’s major security products such as antivirus and a VPN. If you’re already paying for a separate security suite, and are dreading another subscription for a password manager, it’s a great way to include your password protection into that cost. Bitdefender Premium Security is worth having on its own however, as it's currently PCMag’s Editors’ Choice for security suites, so not only will you be moving into an almost passwordless lifestyle, you’ll also have some of the best cybersecurity available.​