Enrollment means a user has registered a device or authenticator and is eligible to use passwordless access. Active usage means that user is actually authenticating into connected applications with that method. The distinction matters because enrollment alone can overstate success, while active usage shows whether the control is genuinely replacing passwords.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
User enrollment and active passwordless usage measure different stages of control adoption, and confusing them can create a false sense of progress. Enrollment only proves that an authenticator or device has been registered; it does not prove the user actually signs in without a password. Security teams care because passwordless programs are usually justified by reductions in phishing exposure, help desk reset volume, and password reuse risk.
That distinction becomes more important when identities are tied to NHI governance, since access reporting can look healthy while real authentication behavior remains unchanged. Current guidance from NIST AI Risk Management Framework and the OWASP Agentic AI Top 10 both reflect the same operational principle: measurement must reflect actual use, not just configuration state. In NHIMG research on the AI Agents: The New Attack Surface report, only 52% of companies can track and audit the data their AI agents access, which is a reminder that visibility gaps often start with weak telemetry, not weak policy. In practice, many security teams discover that passwordless “adoption” was overstated only after help desk metrics and login logs are reconciled.
How It Works in Practice
Enrollment is the setup event. A user registers a platform authenticator, security key, passkey, or mobile device, and the identity system records that the account is capable of passwordless sign-in. Active usage is the runtime event. The user actually authenticates to a relying party, and the IdP or application records a passwordless assertion in the authentication logs.
That means the two metrics should be separated in reporting. Enrollment tells you whether the control is available; active usage tells you whether it is replacing passwords. The difference matters for migration planning, phishing resistance, and help desk impact. If enrollment is high but usage is low, users may be falling back to passwords because of app incompatibility, device trust issues, recovery friction, or conditional access rules that still route them to legacy flows.
Practitioners should validate both layers:
- Enrollment rate: how many eligible users have at least one registered passwordless method
- Activation rate: how many enrolled users have completed a passwordless sign-in in a defined period
- Usage share: what percentage of all authentications are passwordless versus password-based
- Fallback rate: how often users enrolled in passwordless still choose or are forced to use a password
This distinction maps well to NHI-style telemetry discipline, especially when correlated with Ultimate Guide to NHIs — 2025 Outlook and Predictions and implementation guidance in the CSA MAESTRO agentic AI threat modeling framework, because both emphasize proving actual use and limiting reliance on stale assumptions. These controls tend to break down in hybrid environments where legacy SSO apps, unmanaged endpoints, or inconsistent conditional access policies force silent password fallback.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter reporting often increases operational overhead, requiring organisations to balance measurement accuracy against log quality, support effort, and user friction. That tradeoff becomes visible during staged rollouts, where security teams may want to count every enrolled user as “success” while operations teams need proof that passwords are actually being retired.
Best practice is evolving, but current guidance suggests separating the metric by lifecycle stage. Some teams report enrollment, active use, and password fallback as three distinct measures. Others calculate “passwordless coverage” only when an account has both registration and repeated passwordless authentication within a defined window. The second approach is usually more defensible because it avoids overstating adoption from a one-time test login.
Edge cases include:
- Shared devices, where a user may be enrolled but not consistently able to complete device-bound authentication
- Recovery flows, where a single password-based recovery event can distort the view of active passwordless use
- Service accounts and delegated access, which should not be mixed into human passwordless metrics
- Conditional access policies that allow passwordless only on some networks or devices, creating partial adoption
For teams tracking broader identity resilience, the same measurement discipline is reflected in the LLMjacking: How Attackers Hijack AI Using Compromised NHIs research and the NIST AI 600-1 Generative AI Profile, both of which stress that controls must be verified in operation, not assumed from enrollment state alone. In practice, enrollment-only reporting becomes misleading in environments with frequent device turnover or incomplete authenticator registration recovery.
Standards & Framework Alignment
This section maps relevant standards and security frameworks to the operational risks and controls described in this guidance.
OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 and OWASP Agentic AI Top 10 address the attack and risk surface, while NIST CSF 2.0, NIST SP 800-63 and NIST AI RMF set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AC-1 | Identity proofing and access control hinge on whether passwordless is actually used. |
| NIST SP 800-63 | IAL/AAL | Enrollment and active use map to assurance at registration versus authentication time. |
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-03 | Shows why credential state and real use must be measured separately for identities. |
| OWASP Agentic AI Top 10 | LLM-01 | Agentic systems need runtime proof of actual tool and auth usage, not setup state. |
| NIST AI RMF | GOVERN | Governance requires metrics that reflect actual system use rather than configured capability. |
Track enrolled versus active passwordless access and confirm access decisions match real authentication behavior.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
- What is the difference between passwordless SSO and OpenID Connect for remote desktop access?
- What is the difference between SMS-based MFA and passwordless authentication for mobile account protection?
- What is the difference between standards-based passwordless authentication and a broader identity-backed passwordless experience?
- What is the difference between workload identity federation and a static API key?
