Another key point to the Microsoft Passport credential system is that the user needs to enroll every device used to access the service (IDP). The public key is associated with the account so that a challenge can be sent that can only correctly respond to the IDP. Windows generates a public/private key pair with the private key stored securely outside of the Windows 10 OS. Microsoft Passport involves a user logging onto the Windows 10 computer with multi-factor (PIN, face, iris, fingerprint, etc) and either creating a new account or associating an existing account with an IDentity Provider (IDP). The plan is that users of cloud services supporting FIDO is that there will no longer be passwords associated with the user’s account.

Microsoft has resurrected the Passport moniker for a new PKI credential system that requires multi-factor authentication.Most interesting about Microsoft Passport is that it fully supports the Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance standards which means it will work with many web/cloud services without modification. This post will soon incorporate this information.

Update: Microsoft published a whitepaper on Microsoft Passport and Windows Hello. As I gain clarification, I will update this post. Note that the information in this post is subject to change (& my misunderstanding). This post covers my understanding of this (still beta) technology. There hasn’t been much information on how the new credential system works, so I challenged myself to gather as much information and understand it as best as possible before the Microsoft Ignite conference ends this week.

One of biggest changes in Windows 10 is the new credential management method and the related “Next Generation Credential”, now named Microsoft Passport. At the Microsoft Ignite conference this week, there are several sessions covering Windows 10 features.

Fido key windows 10