Passwordless Authentication
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Passwords leave enterprises vulnerable to damaging cyber attacks, while employees are frustrated by increasingly complex password requirements, resulting in time and resources being wasted on password resets.
Comprehensive Passwordless Authentication
Why go passwordless?
Passwordless authentication offers improved security, a better user experience and lower long-term costs. Users aren’t required to create or enter a password at any time. Say goodbye to passwords, SMS codes and OTP apps.
Khader Mohammed
Cybersecurity Partner
Why Choose Passwordless Authentication?
- Proactive defense against emerging threats.
- Tailored solutions that align with your goals and industry.
- Increased organizational resilience and readiness.
- Support for achieving and maintaining regulatory compliance.
Our Passwordless Authentication Process
Key lifecycle management considerations when building a secure passwordless strategy
In the move away from problematic passwords and phish-able MFA, 66% of organizations report they are piloting, have deployed, or are planning to deploy passwordless authentication.9 Going passwordless is a journey for most organizations—the first step is often moving away from legacy forms of MFA, and moving to strong phishing-resistant MFA with the FIDO2/WebAuthn standard. Once there, organizations are poised to leverage FIDO2 passwordless-enabled credentials, now known as passkeys, to complete their passwordless journeys.
Today, many passkey implementations on the market focus on the user experience of authentication; they unfortunately skip critical focus on account lifecycle management, including device registration and account bootstrapping. Many vendors also default to passwords and legacy MFA, creating attack points that bypass the intended security of phishing-resistant MFA solutions and undermining Zero Trust, which progresses toward exclusive use of phishing-resistant MFA.10
In order to ensure a secure bridge to passwordless, this white paper will outline critical implementation factors to consider on the journey to passwordless using passkeys to ensure strong security across the entire authentication lifecycle.
74% of data breaches traced back to the human element e.g. social engineering phishing attacks, privilege misuse1
60% of compromise factors in enterprise cloud environments are due to weak passwords or leaked credentials2
66% of enterprises have / piloting / planning passwordless authentication within the next year3
50% of the workforce will be passwordless by 2025
What is passwordless authentication?
Passwordless is any implementation of authentication that doesn’t require the user to create and/or provide a password during any part of the authentication lifecycle, including:
Over the past few years, the term “passwordless” has gained momentum and now it is used by many security, authentication, and identity solution providers. As with other buzzwords in the industry, the term “passwordless” is not strongly defined, leading to an ecosystem where not all passwordless implementations provide the protection and ease of use proposed by the term.
Many instances of passwordless rely on the legacy definition of passwordless: any form of authentication that doesn’t require a user to provide a password at login. This definition allows for many legacy MFA solutions such as SMS verification and email magic links to be considered “passwordless,” when these solutions are both outdated and highly susceptible to account takeovers. Furthermore, this legacy passwordless definition lacks the nuance to ensure that phishing-resistant authentication implementations are not falling back on passwords or legacy MFA during device registration, account bootstrapping or authenticating to legacy on-premise systems. Additionally, a secure passwordless solution still needs to provide multiple authentication factors to protect access when a device is stolen such as a PIN or biometric factor.
Understanding Your Security Needs and Goals
We start by thoroughly assessing your current security landscape, including infrastructure, systems, and processes. We work to understand your business objectives and industry-specific compliance requirements to ensure our solutions align with your operational goals.
Uncovering Gaps and Vulnerabilities
Once we have a clear picture of your environment, we conduct a detailed analysis to identify gaps and vulnerabilities. This step involves evaluating potential risks in your systems, processes, and policies to uncover areas that could expose your organization to cyber threats.
Crafting a Tailored Security Strategy
Based on our findings, we develop a comprehensive strategic security framework tailored to your unique needs. This plan includes actionable recommendations, technology roadmaps, and priority areas to address potential weaknesses while supporting long-term resilience.
Implementing Solutions for Stronger Protection
During the execution phase, we provide end-to-end support for the implementation of security measures. This includes deploying necessary technologies, configuring systems, and delivering training to empower your team with the skills and knowledge to maintain a strong security posture.
Ensuring Continuous Security Improvement
Cybersecurity is a continuous journey. Our experts work with you to monitor your security environment, refine strategies, and adapt to emerging threats. We help you implement ongoing improvements to ensure your defenses remain robust and effective.
Take the First Step Toward Enhanced Cybersecurity
Protect your business, safeguard your data, and build resilience against evolving threats with StonyPoint’s expert cybersecurity solutions.
Cybersecurity Consulting in Action
Passwordless authentication based on Smart Cards or FIDO2 (FIDO2 credentials represented now through passkeys) fundamentally changes how authentication factors are processed. In a passwordless model, the validation of the first factor and second factor shifts solely to the authenticator. Typically the first factor is physical possession of the authenticator itself, and the second factor is the PIN or a biometric validation to unlock the authenticator and perform the cryptographic operation.
Given that this “truer” definition of passwordless authentication shifts much of the authentication process to the authenticator, it is vitally important to ensure the private key is secured so it cannot be stolen or cloned and equally vital to know that the factor is actually being used in all authentication scenarios.
Before detailing the implementation considerations to ensure modern, strong passwordless, let’s take a step back and better define phishing-resistance and passkeys, which are the foundation of today’s passwordless deployments.
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