A Developer’s History of Authentication

The history of digital authentication has progressed rapidly over the past 60 years, evolving from plaintext passwords to biometric technology. Early forms of authentication included password encryption by Robert Morris in the late 1960s and dynamic passwords introduced in the mid-1980s. Public key infrastructure (PKI) was developed in the late ’80s and became widely adopted in the late ’90s to enhance security on the World Wide Web. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) and single sign-on (SSO) gained popularity in the 2000s, while biometrics emerged as a secure form of authentication in the 2010s. The future of authentication may involve using heartbeat, gait, or behavior for identification purposes.