What is Passwordless Authentication?
Passwordless Authentication
What is passwordless authentication?
Passwordless authentication is the process of verifying someone’s identity without the use of the typical claim (username) and password. Tools that inject traditional credentials into a login prompt are not passwordless.
The most common passwordless authentication methods are biometrics, such as fingerprint and facial recognition, and out-of-band apps, which are common on smartphones. These smartphone apps often require a biometric ID verification combining multiple factors into a single authentication process.
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Why is passwordless authentication popular?
While the promise of passwordless authentication replacing traditional credentials has been alive for over three decades, the technology available today has made it a reality. In 2022, the passwordless market was $15.6B, but it is expected to grow to over $53B by 2030. A large part of today’s passwordless adoption is made possible through smartphones. The “The State of Passwordless” Dark Reading report commissioned by OpenText reports that 64% of respondents feel it’s important to move to a fully passwordless authentication model.
During this past decade, compliance with government mandates has been the motivating force for organizations to adopt passwordless technologies:
- Government—Government and public sector agencies are now subject to specific multifactor authentication requirements. These requirements started out as recommendations but, over the years, turned into policies. The policies were rolled out as general guidelines but over time evolved into specific two-factor mandates for access to classified documents.
- Healthcare—Healthcare breaches in the U.S. and worldwide inflict more financial pain onto organizations in this market than any other, even finance. Government institutions have responded with specific passwordless and two-factor authentication requirements.
- Financial Services—While government regulations mandate the protection of customers’ private financial and personal information, maintaining consumer trust drives the need for data security. While financial services have been a leading adopter of multifactor authentication, smartphone platforms have further pushed passwordless adoption for identity verification.
Identity verification for the workforce
Historically, the use of passwordless technology in workforce security has been relegated to specialized applications and users. Only in the past decade have the four most significant barriers to its adoption come down:
- Hard tokens, company-grade fingerprint readers, and other biometric devices are no longer too expensive for enterprise-wide use.
- The cost of enrollment and device setup, once prohibitive for mass adoption—especially for remote employees and offices too small to justify onsite IT support—is now more affordable.
- The ongoing remote administration of authentication devices once impossible, is now becoming routine, with remote resets and reconfiguration becoming the norm.
- Where security teams, their management, and especially their users formerly lacked confidence in passwordless technologies, the recent proliferation of use cases has generated a wave of authentication modernization and planning.
Beyond the device evolution, authentication use cases and requirements around them have also changed beyond government mandates.
Remote work
Now more than ever, field workers access private information using mobile platforms. Far beyond road warriors, the adoption of telecommuting has seen significant growth during the past three years. While working from anywhere had been steadily growing before the pandemic, new remote work policies have since gained widespread adoption across all industries.
Cloud
Structured and unstructured private data is increasingly stored and accessed from the cloud rather than the data center. As the use of data centers hosting corporate services and routing remote traffic has dramatically diminished, firewall security techniques are becoming increasingly irrelevant.
Personal device use
Further eroding security control, is the growing adoption of bring-your-own-device (BYOD). Remote access to cloud-hosted resources from BYOD shifts the rudimental reliance away from managed devices to identity-based security. This reliance translates to a heightened exposure to phishing and other identity attacks that circumvent identity verification.
This move away from managed networks, in-house digital resources (services and unstructured data), and company devices means that security teams can no longer depend on them as part of their strategy. Instead, basing security on identity necessitates a verified strategy that is highly resistant to imposters. And while adoption of multifactor authentication will continue to grow, single-factor passwordless raises the security bar over username and password while simplifying the authentication process. Employees enjoy the speed and convenience of facial recognition, verified fingerprint, or other passive experience. Meanwhile, the organization gains increased protection against phishing—the most prominent vulnerability and source of breaches.
Consumers moving to passwordless
The core passwordless enabler is the smartphone. Packing a hefty amount of computing power in a small package, they’ve become an indispensable to so many of us, making them a passwordless game-changer. We use them for everything—from texting to social media, to online shopping and banking. We take photos at a moment’s notice, look for directions, or search for answers.
This dependency on handheld computing devices has led to an authentication paradigm shift like none before:
- Universal connectivity allows out-of-band verification of someone’s identity during authentication.
- portable processing power can generate seeds and keys that act as one-time pins.
- Biometric and passive authentication methods will advance as smartphones advance, allowing verification to evolve and become more sophisticated.
Consumers are becoming more aware of the threats that traditional authentication poses to them. Organizations recognize this shift and see opportunities to enhance their digital services.
How secure is passwordless authentication?
Verizon's data breach team identified spear phishing as the dominant credential-poaching method used by criminals. Spear phishing is initiated when the attacker sends an email that appears to be from a trusted source, such as a bank, a colleague, or some other source that sends victims to a mock website. This website requires authentication, duping victims into revealing their credentials, entering credit card numbers, or providing some other set of private information.
A variation of this attack offers a link that, when clicked, installs malware on the victims’ computers.
Passwordless technology is well suited to protecting against these types of attacks. For platforms configured to eliminate passwords, none can be captured via entry or keystroke capture. For platforms that offer passwords as an option in addition to passwordless, it can be reinforced with a passwordless multifactor authentication, such as something they have—like a smartphone—or something they are—biometric.
This reliance on smartphones brings their vulnerabilities to the forefront of the security discussion. Left unattended, mobile devices can fall into the hands of hackers and other bad actors, who can intercept PINs, OTPs, and out-of-band push approvals, and reconfigure biometrics to match themselves. SIM card theft poses an SMS/OTP risk too. Even if users are careful, their security can be breached when attackers manipulate service providers into canceling and transferring crucial information from legitimate SIM cards.
While no organization can thwart all threats, it is true that simply moving to a passwordless paradigm protects against the most common ones. Even for single-factor authentication, moving away from typed-in credentials boosts security. Still more can done, for example, by elevating security levels via risk-based authentication (RBA). RBA has a long-proven track record of determining when additional steps are needed to verify a user's identity. Organizations can invoke a second-factor authentication under pre-defined conditions, such as:
- Has the device been seen before?
- Device fingerprinting
- Browser cookie
- Is the user located where it's expected to be?
- IP geolocation service
- Geofencing (GSM)
- Is the user behaving as expected?
- What is the risk level of the information?
Such criteria help organizaitons determine how many levels of identity verification are necessary. For example, requiring a fingerprint to access information. Still, there is a more sensitive subset requiring multifactor authentication when risk is elevated.
Passwordless Buyer’s Guide
How to implement
How to implement passwordless authentication
Implementing passwordless login involves more than retiring password use—it requires carefully designing user flows, choosing strong authenticators, and planning fallback paths. Here is a roadmap (find more details in OpenText’s Passwordless Buyer’s Guide):
1. Define assurance tiers and use-case mapping. Start by classifying your resources by risk level (e.g. basic account info vs. financial operations). Use standards like NIST’s Authentication Assurance Levels (AAL) to decide how strong your authentication must be for each scenario. Then map each user journey (login, transaction, admin action) to an appropriate assurance tier.
2. Choose the right authentication methods. Select one or more passwordless methods that align with your risk, usability, and cost goals. Ideally, pick interoperable standards (e.g. FIDO2) so you remain vendor-agnostic and cross-platform. Options include:
- Hardware security keys/FIDO2/WebAuthn
- Mobile apps with out-of-band push or TOTP
- Biometric verification (fingerprint, face, voice)
- Contextual/passive factors (device posture, geolocation, Bluetooth)
3. Design a secure enrollment flow. The binding between a user and their authenticator is critical. Verify identity (for example, via existing credentials, identity proofing, or in-person checks), then cryptographically register the authenticator. Support multiple authenticators per account (so users have backups) and allow them to disable or change methods.
4. Implement authentication flows. For each interaction (login, transaction, session renewal):
- Challenge the user’s enrolled authenticator.
- Use cryptographically secure exchanges (e.g., WebAuthn, CTAP).
- Include fraud/risk signals (device fingerprint, location, behavior) to adapt the required strength.
- Fail open or escalate only when needed (don’t block low-risk access).
5. Provide fallback/recovery paths. No system is perfect. Users may lose their phone or key. Provide secure, high-assurance recovery options (e.g. support identity verification, alternate authenticators, or challenge-response fallback) to restore access without weakening security.
6. Monitor, iterate, and phase rollouts. Start with limited pilot groups or non-critical paths. Monitor user feedback, drop-off rates, support tickets, and security events. Use that data to refine your flows, calibrate risk thresholds, and expand coverage. Make sure logging and forensic traces are in place to detect anomalies.
Frequently asked questions
What does “passwordless authentication” mean?
Passwordless authentication means users can log in without memorizing or typing passwords. Instead, authentication relies on cryptographic credentials tied to a device (or biometric/PIN) to prove identity.
How is passwordless authentication different from multifactor authentication (MFA)?
MFA typically layers additional checks on top of a password. Passwordless authentication avoids passwords altogether, relying solely on stronger factors (device, biometrics, or possession) and optionally mixing in additional factors.
What technologies or methods enable passwordless login?
Common passwordless approaches include:
- Hardware security keys/FIDO2/WebAuthn
- Biometric checks (fingerprint, face) or device PIN
- Mobile push notifications or apps
- Magic links or one-time codes (if designed securely)
Is passwordless more secure than passwords?
In many cases, yes, passwordless is more secure than passwords—especially when implemented correctly. Because there’s no password to steal, it’s resistant to credential reuse, brute force, and many phishing attacks.
What happens if a user loses their device?
You should build fallback or recovery options—e.g., alternate authenticators, identity verification steps, or pre-registered recovery methods—so users can regain access without weakening security.
Is passwordless hard to adopt or expensive?
There can be upfront costs to passwordless (infrastructure, user onboarding, device provisioning), but those are often offset by reductions in password resets, helpdesk load, and security risk.
Will users find passwordless easy to use?
Generally, yes. Many users find biometric or push-based methods easier and faster than passwords. However, user education and smooth flows are essential to reduce friction.
