Going Passwordless: What Harvard Learned From Making the Move

Passwords have been a weak link in campus security for years. Now even familiar multifactor authentication methods are being challenged by attacks such as prompt bombing, SIM swapping and attacker-in-the-middle phishing. 

Harvard University decided to tackle the problem head-on with a phased shift to passwordless authentication. But rolling it out across a large, diverse university community meant confronting questions that don't show up neatly on an implementation checklist: How do you handle privacy concerns? What happens when faculty and staff resist changing the way they log in? How much choice should users have? And what new attack techniques emerge once passwords are no longer the target?

Join us for an engaging conversation with members of Harvard's information security and data privacy team about what happened when the university put passwordless into practice. They'll share what they expected going in, what surprised them, how their approach evolved and what they would want another institution to know before starting down the same path.

Why attend:

• Hear about Harvard's timeline, unexpected roadblocks and practical lessons for authentication strategies
• Understand what passwordless can protect against, with an eye toward the future
• See why Harvard gave users multiple passwordless options — and how that choice helped increase adoption