How General Motors Moved 200,000 People to Passkeys
Summary
Andrew Cameron, a distinguished engineer at GM, discusses the company’s strategic shift to passwordless authentication using passkeys. He details managing identity for 200,000 employees, including unique challenges for manufacturing and guest users. The episode covers preparing for Microsoft’s SMS MFA deprecation, leveraging Windows Hello and platform SSO, and using Conditional Access policies to enforce strong authentication while mitigating risks through phased rollouts.
Topics discussed
Introduction and guest background
Evolution of identity at GM from 2000 to cloud
Manufacturing challenges and custom auth methods
AppGobster ad break
Microsoft SMS deprecation and guest user challenges
User adoption strategies and communication
Empathy for users and testing rollouts
Windows Hello, pass keys, and CA policies
Handling legacy apps and admin role security
Synced vs device-bound pass keys
Due diligence, corner cases, and conclusion
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