LastPass customers can now open their password manager vault using the LastPass app instead of their master password.
This "passwordless" login replaces a master password as the primary method of authenticating when logging in to a LastPass vault on the desktop. It eliminates the need to remember a complicated passcode on the fly, though you'll still need that master password to register a LastPass account, verify new trusted devices, or authenticate if passwordless login fails.
Passwordless login is available to all LastPass Business and Teams customers, as well as LastPass Free, Premium, and Families accounts.
In a press release, LastPass says it's the first password manager to embrace a passwordless option backed by the FIDO Alliance. The group, where LastPass sits on the board of directors, is focused on developing standards that will "help reduce the world’s over-reliance on passwords."
LastPass will support next-gen FIDO2 passwordless biometric face and fingerprint authentication from other authenticator apps and hardware security keys on the desktop later this year. Biometric logins are already supported on the LastPass app. (Though as PCMag's senior security analyst Max Eddy notes, biometric scans aren’t the key to total security.)
LastPass says passwordless logins may convince more people to use a password manager, which is especially important on business accounts at risk of falling prey to hackers.