Passwordless authentication and zero trust readiness need a broader IAM view

At a glance

What this is: This is Axiad’s summary of KuppingerCole’s passwordless authentication research and its key finding that passwordless adoption is being evaluated through phishing resistance, Zero Trust readiness, and IAM integration.

Why it matters: It matters because passwordless only becomes operationally useful when IAM, authentication, and lifecycle controls can work across multiple identity ecosystems without creating new blind spots.

By the numbers:

• 70% of respondents have 3 or more IAM ecosystems in use.

👉 Read Axiad’s summary of KuppingerCole’s passwordless authentication research

Context

Passwordless authentication is not just a login preference. It is a governance choice about how identity assurance, phishing resistance, and Zero Trust alignment hold up when organisations already operate across multiple IAM ecosystems.

Axiad’s summary of the KuppingerCole research shows that the real constraint is integration, not awareness. When identity estates are fragmented, passwordless has to fit existing IAM, not replace it in a clean-room model.

Key questions

Q: How should security teams roll out passwordless authentication in fragmented IAM environments?

A: Start with a mapped view of directories, federation paths, and application exceptions, then choose the user populations where passwordless can be enforced consistently. The key is to align policy, device trust, and session handling across every IAM ecosystem in scope. If those controls differ materially, the rollout will create uneven assurance and more operational exceptions.

Q: Why does passwordless authentication matter for Zero Trust programmes?

A: Passwordless reduces password replay and phishing risk, which strengthens the initial identity check in a Zero Trust model. But Zero Trust also depends on continuous verification, authorisation, and session policy, so passwordless is only one piece of the control stack. Teams should treat it as an enabling control, not a complete Zero Trust solution.

Q: What do security teams get wrong about passwordless adoption?

A: The common mistake is treating passwordless as a login project instead of an identity governance change. If device binding, federation, and fallback authentication are inconsistent, the organisation keeps the same risk patterns under a different front end. Success depends on operational consistency across the full IAM estate.

Q: How do organisations know whether passwordless is actually improving security?

A: Look for reduced password replay exposure, fewer phishing-driven account takeovers, and consistent authentication policy across all major identity ecosystems. If users still depend on weak fallback paths or separate legacy sign-in methods, the programme may improve convenience without materially changing risk.

Technical breakdown

Why passwordless changes authentication assurance

Passwordless authentication removes the password as the primary shared secret and shifts assurance toward cryptographic keys, device-bound factors, and platform-mediated verification. That reduces phishing exposure because attackers can no longer reuse a stolen password the same way they can replay credentials. The governance challenge is that passwordless is only as strong as the binding between the user, the device, and the relying application. If that binding is weak or inconsistently enforced across channels, the authentication layer becomes easier to standardise than to trust.

Practical implication: validate how your authentication stack binds identity to devices and sessions before treating passwordless as a control outcome.

What zero trust expects from passwordless authentication

Zero Trust Architecture assumes continuous verification, not one-time trust at sign-in. Passwordless can support that model by reducing credential replay risk and improving the quality of the initial authentication event, but it does not solve authorisation, device posture, or session risk by itself. The report’s emphasis on Zero Trust suitability matters because buyers often treat passwordless as a front-door fix when the real requirement is end-to-end identity confidence across access decisions, session validation, and policy enforcement.

Practical implication: map passwordless to your Zero Trust access flows, not just to login modernisation.

How multi-IAM ecosystems complicate passwordless rollout

When organisations run several IAM ecosystems in parallel, passwordless deployment becomes an integration problem. Different directories, legacy apps, federation patterns, and device trust models can produce inconsistent assurance levels, even if the user experience looks unified. The article’s reference to a large share of respondents managing three or more IAM ecosystems shows why this matters: governance has to cover identity portability, policy consistency, and exception handling across environments. Without that, passwordless becomes another isolated control layer rather than a programme-level capability.

Practical implication: inventory every IAM ecosystem in scope and define where passwordless assurance will be consistent versus exception-based.

NHI Mgmt Group analysis

Passwordless authentication is now an IAM integration problem, not a feature decision. The article’s strongest signal is the gap between modern authentication goals and fragmented reality. When 70% of organisations already operate three or more IAM ecosystems, passwordless cannot be assessed in isolation. Practitioners should treat this as a cross-platform governance issue, not a single-product evaluation.

Phishing resistance only matters when the surrounding identity estate can preserve the assurance gain. Removing passwords reduces one class of attack, but it does not eliminate weak federation, poor device trust, or inconsistent session enforcement. That means passwordless succeeds or fails at the control plane level, where authentication, policy, and access decisions meet. The implication is to judge passwordless by end-to-end assurance, not by login experience alone.

Zero Trust readiness is the more useful lens than passwordless enthusiasm. The KuppingerCole criteria point to a larger question: can the authentication method support continuous verification and policy enforcement across hybrid identity environments? That is the real standard for enterprise adoption. Practitioners should evaluate passwordless as a dependency of Zero Trust design, not as a standalone modernisation goal.

Multi-ecosystem identity estates create a passwordless governance gap. The report highlights a structural problem common in enterprise IAM: the assurance model may be modern, but the environment is still federated, legacy, and operationally inconsistent. That gap is where exceptions, bypasses, and shadow authentication methods accumulate. The practical conclusion is that passwordless programmes need identity estate rationalisation, not just implementation work.

From our research:

• 91.6% of secrets remain valid five days after the targeted organisation is notified, showing a critical gap in remediation procedures, according to Ultimate Guide to NHIs.
• Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts, which shows how often identity governance is still operating without complete coverage.
• For the lifecycle side of the problem, read Ultimate Guide to NHIs , Lifecycle Processes for Managing NHIs for how rotation, offboarding, and governance fit together.

What this signals

Identity modernisation will keep failing if teams treat passwordless as a front-door project. The signal for practitioners is that authentication reform has to be designed alongside federation cleanup, device trust, and exception handling. The more fragmented the estate, the more likely passwordless becomes a partial control with uneven coverage.

Multi-ecosystem estates will pressure teams to rationalise before they modernise. When identity systems proliferate, security teams spend more time preserving consistency than gaining assurance. That is why passwordless programmes should be paired with an inventory of legacy sign-in paths and a plan to retire the weakest fallbacks.

Zero Trust alignment is the real programme test. If passwordless cannot support continuous verification and policy enforcement across applications, then it has not improved the operating model enough to matter. Teams should measure whether authentication outcomes are becoming more consistent, not just more convenient.

For practitioners

• Inventory authentication dependencies across IAM ecosystems Map every directory, federation path, and legacy application that will be touched by passwordless so you can see where assurance will differ by platform.
• Define where passwordless is mandatory versus exception-based Set clear policy for which user populations, applications, and device states must use passwordless and where fallback authentication is still allowed.
• Tie passwordless to Zero Trust control objectives Measure passwordless against access policy enforcement, session validation, and phishing resistance rather than treating it as a user-experience upgrade.
• Rationalise overlapping IAM ecosystems before scaling rollout Reduce duplicated identity stacks where possible, because multiple IAM ecosystems create inconsistent assurance, fragmented policy, and avoidable administrative overhead.

Key takeaways

• Passwordless authentication is valuable when it strengthens identity assurance across the whole IAM estate, not when it simply replaces a password field.
• The cited research shows that most organisations still operate multiple IAM ecosystems, which makes rollout consistency the main challenge.
• Teams should evaluate passwordless through Zero Trust, federation, and exception handling to determine whether it reduces risk or just changes the login experience.

Key terms

• Passwordless authentication: An authentication approach that removes passwords as the primary login secret and relies on stronger factors such as cryptographic keys, device binding, or platform-based verification. In practice, it shifts the security problem from password strength to assurance consistency across devices, sessions, and federated identity systems.
• Zero Trust Architecture: A security model that assumes no identity or device should be trusted by default, even after sign-in. For identity teams, it means authentication, authorisation, and session policy must all be evaluated continuously rather than relying on a single login event.
• Federation path: The route an identity request takes between systems such as directories, identity providers, and applications. Federation paths matter because each hop can alter assurance, create policy exceptions, or introduce a weaker fallback that undermines the intended authentication model.

Deepen your knowledge

NHI governance, agentic AI identity, and machine identity lifecycle are core topics in our NHI Foundation Level course, the industry's only accredited NHI security programme. If you are responsible for identity security strategy or NHI governance in your organisation, it is worth exploring.

This post draws on content published by Axiad: KuppingerCole Highlights Axiad as a Top Passwordless Authentication Provider. Read the original.