Security leaders were surveyed on passwordless authentication by Axiad. The purpose of the survey was to gain insight into the top authentication challenges, user experiences and attitudes with modern authentication, and to determine organizational desires to move towards passwordless authentication.

Survey respondents included developers, IT and cybersecurity professionals from mid-market to large enterprises within financial, manufacturing, technology, communications, media and other sectors, from both the U.S. and Canada. Ninety-two percent of respondents are concerned about compromised credentials because of phishing or social engineering attacks, which points to the recent rise and success of both these attack vectors.

Fifty-nine percent are confident that compromised accounts or credentials have led to a successful cyberattack over the last 12 months, which indicates the growing concern about the general security of credentials and the vulnerability of those credentials to execute cyberattacks. Eighty-two percent say moving to passwordless authentication is in their top five priorities, implying respondents know that passwords are at the root of the problem when it comes to data breaches.

Eighty-five percent say they are moving to passwordless authentication in the next 12 to 24 months, suggesting that the death of passwords is inevitable for many organizations. Eighty-six percent say moving to passwordless authentication will have a positive impact on their help desks and IT support teams, which signifies additional cost saving benefits to organizations by eliminating the time and money associated with password resets.