Passkeys are a replacement for passwords, and they are now supported on most platforms and operating systems. They’re also a feature of Okta Customer Identity Cloud powered by Auth0, which means your users can enjoy the convenience and security passkeys provide. In this article, you’ll learn: Why passwords are no longer adequate How passkeys improve on passwords What the passkey user experience is like How passkeys work Passwords: A 1960s solution to a 1960s problem An IBM 7094 mainframe, the home of the original username/password system. (Creative Commons photo by Arnold Reinhold) In 1961, MIT computer scientist Dr. Fernando Corbató changed the way computers worked by developing an operating system that supported several simultaneous users. For it to work, each user had to be given their own disk space, so he assigned each user an account that they would access using a.