What is fueling the adoption of passwordless authentication?

An identity and access management research report from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), finds organizations, frustrated with poor user experience and weak security, are moving towards adopting passwordless, continuous authentication.

The impact of adopting passwordless authentication

• 40% of organizations using multi-factor authentication (MFA) for customers make it optional. These organizations likely choose to make MFA voluntary since they recognize the friction “MFA fatigue” creates each time a customer’s accesses their products or services.
• 57% of organizations using, evaluating, or testing the elimination of passwords say passwordless authentication methods have a significant positive impact on improved user experience.
• 58% of organizations considered risk scoring to be critically important for customer identity types and almost half of organizations using identity risk services for third-parties considered risk scoring to be critically important for these third-party organizations and third-party individuals.

“Sixty-three percent of organizations using, evaluating, or testing the elimination of passwords say passwordless authentication methods have a significant positive impact on increased IT/security efficiency according to our research,” said Jack Poller, Senior Analyst, ESG.

“Organizations have a leading advantage with advanced authentication, specifically continuous behavioral-based authentication, that delivers next-generation authentication platform for securing digital identities and organizations.”

As a result of the research, assessing risk across human and non-human identities is a priority among IT professionals.

“As seen from through the lens of IT and cybersecurity leaders of the big three initiatives, they’re always trying to increase the efficiency of their teams, trying to reduce risk and because user experience has become a demand, transitioning to passwordless authentication is the way of the future. The survey findings agree with our experience that as organizations demand a frictionless user experience as they digitally transform,” said Paul Trulove, CEO of SecureAuth.