Security teams should focus on phishing-resistant authentication that satisfies insurer expectations while keeping login fast and usable. Traditional MFA often creates adoption resistance, help desk burden, and downtime. Passwordless approaches can reduce reliance on shared secrets, but only if they are truly passwordless and not just password hiding. The practical goal is stronger assurance with lower operational drag.
How to satisfy insurer controls without making login miserable
Cyber insurers usually care about the assurance level behind access, not whether a control feels old-fashioned. The practical move is to meet the requirement with phishing-resistant methods that reduce credential replay and help desk churn, then keep the user path short enough that people actually use it. That often means replacing password-and-push patterns with hardware-backed or platform-backed authentication that is fast, low-friction, and hard to phish.
Teams should also be precise about terminology. “Passwordless” only helps when the password is genuinely removed from the login decision, not merely hidden behind another prompt. If users can still fall back to shared secrets or easy-to-phish approvals, the insurer may see stronger paperwork than real assurance. The control has to work at the protocol and enrollment level, not just in the user interface.
One useful benchmark is that many organisations still struggle with secret handling and identity hygiene, which is why insurers keep pushing for stronger authentication and tighter access discipline. NHIMG’s Ultimate Guide to Non-Human Identities notes that 96% of organisations store secrets outside dedicated secrets managers in vulnerable locations, and 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges. Those conditions make “strong login” a partial fix unless the surrounding access model is also tightened.
Where friction usually comes from, and how to remove it
Most user resistance comes from three places: extra prompts, unreliable recovery, and slow support workflows. If a control adds steps every time people sign in, or creates lockouts when devices change, users will work around it. If the recovery process is slow or opaque, the help desk becomes the real authentication layer, which defeats the purpose and inflates operational cost.
A better design reduces the number of times users have to prove themselves while increasing confidence in each event. That means streamlining enrollment, making device-based or passkey-based sign-in the default, and reserving step-up checks for risky events rather than every routine login. It also means treating recovery as part of the security design, because the easiest control to bypass is often the one with the weakest account recovery path.
Practical alignment with insurance expectations is easier when the control set maps cleanly to assurance, auditability, and least privilege. OWASP ASVS is useful here because it anchors authentication and access-control expectations in verifiable requirements, while CISA Secure by Design reinforces the idea that secure defaults should also be operationally usable.
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 address the attack and risk surface, while CIS Controls v8, NIST CSF 2.0 and NIST SP 800-63 set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-01 — Secrets and Credential Exposure | Passwordless and secret reduction directly address exposed credential reliance. |
| NHI-03 — Phishing-Resistant Authentication | The question centers on phishing-resistant authentication that insurers will accept. | |
| Recommendation — Remove shared secrets from login flows and rotate any residual credentials quickly. Adopt phishing-resistant authentication for user sign-in and recovery paths. | ||
| CIS Controls v8 | 6 — Access Control Management | Insurance-aligned access changes should preserve least privilege and usable access control. |
| 5 — Account Management | User friction often comes from enrollment, recovery, and account lifecycle handling. | |
| Recommendation — Enforce least-privilege access and review authentication exceptions regularly. Standardize account enrollment and recovery to reduce help desk-driven workarounds. | ||
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AA — Identity Management, Authentication, and Access Control | The topic is about meeting assurance requirements through stronger authentication. |
| PR.AC — Access Control | Meeting insurer expectations without friction depends on controlling access paths and step-up logic. | |
| Recommendation — Implement phishing-resistant authentication and manage access by assurance level. Apply access-control policies that minimize unnecessary login prompts and exceptions. | ||
| NIST SP 800-63 | IAL — Identity Assurance Level | Insurance questions often hinge on the assurance level behind authentication methods. |
| Recommendation — Map the chosen login method to an assurance level that matches the insurer requirement. | ||
Practitioner Guidance
What to prioritise: Start with phishing-resistant sign-in for the populations and applications that drive the insurer requirement first, then extend it outward. If you try to redesign every login path at once, you usually end up with a partially deployed control and a frustrated support desk.
What to verify: Confirm that the chosen method is truly passwordless, that recovery does not quietly reintroduce shared secrets, and that the insurer will accept the control as written rather than as an interpretation. Also verify that the user journey still works on the devices and browsers your workforce actually uses.
Common mistake: Treating push MFA, fallback passwords, or “hidden” passwords as equivalent to phishing-resistant authentication. Those patterns may improve posture, but they do not deliver the same assurance or the same resistance to social engineering.
Practitioner takeaway: The best answer to insurer pressure is not more prompts, it is a stronger authentication design that removes easy abuse paths while making the normal sign-in path simpler than the workaround.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
- How should security teams reduce phishing risk in MFA without creating more user friction?
- How should security teams implement stronger authentication without creating more user friction?
- How should security teams implement context-aware authentication without creating too much user friction?
- How should security teams implement SaaS DLP without creating too much user friction?
