The FIDO Alliance along with underwriters Axiad, HID, and Thales today released its State of Passkey Deployment in the Enterprise report, finding that 87% of surveyed companies have, or are in the midst of, rolling out passkeys with goals tied to improved user experience, enhanced security, and compliance.
The report is the result of an independent survey commissioned in September 2024 by the FIDO Alliance Enterprise Deployment Working Group, with underwriting support from Axiad, HID, and Thales, to understand the state of passkey deployments in the U.S. and UK.
The survey revealed that enterprises understand the value of passkeys for workforce sign-ins. A majority of decision makers (87%) report deploying passkeys at their companies. Of these, 47% report rolling out a mix of device-bound passkeys (on physical security keys and/or cards) and synced passkeys (synced securely across the user’s devices).
Organisations are prioritising passkey rollouts to users with access to sensitive data and applications, including the three most commonly cited priority groups: Those requiring access to IP (39%), users with admin accounts (39%) and users at the executive level (34%). Within these deployments, organizations are leveraging communication, training, and documentation to increase adoption.
Passkey deployments are linked to significant security and business benefits. Respondents report moderate to strong positive impacts on user experience (82%), security (90%), help-center call reduction (77%), productivity (73%), and digital transformation goals (83%).
Groups that do not have active passkey projects cite complexity (43%), costs (33%), and lack of clarity (29%) about implementation as reasons. This signals a need for increased education for enterprises on rollout strategies to reduce concerns, as there is a correlation between these perceived challenges and the proven benefits of passkeys.
Andrew Shikiar, CEO and executive director of the FIDO Alliance said: “This study is equally encouraging and illuminating as it points to strong willingness and commitment to deploy passkeys to employees – and also is informative in helping FIDO shape resources that we can deliver to help enterprises around the world more quickly and effectively implement their FIDO authentication strategies.”“Passkeys can stop AI-generated social engineering attacks in their tracks while also increasing employee productivity and reducing costs associated with help desk support and security breaches. FIDO Alliance is committed to helping more companies around the world realize these benefits by providing actionable passkey implementation guidance and best practices, which this data will help define.”
New phishing and fraud attempts are being used every day, driven in particular by widespread generative AI use. As reflected in the report, enterprise leaders are becoming aware of the limitations of compromisable passwords, and seeing the value of deploying the most secure and user-friendly authentication methods possible. These insights will be leveraged to further remove the perceived and/or real barriers around passkey adoption so more enterprises can experience their benefits on a global scale.
