Topic starter
07/03/2026 1:02 am
TL;DR: One-time codes remain widely used for MFA, but the article argues they are vulnerable when delivered over SMS or email, can collapse into two forms of the same factor, and add user friction that drives abandonment, according to Beyond Identity. Passwordless MFA reduces those weaknesses by removing passwords from the factor set and shifting trust to device-bound cryptographic keys and biometrics.
Editorial analysis by NHI Mgmt Group, based on content published by Beyond Identity: “Passwordless MFA vs One-Time Codes”.
Key questions
Q: What makes one-time codes weaker than they look in MFA designs?
A: One-time codes only help when the delivery channel and the receiving account are independently trustworthy.
Q: How should teams decide when passwordless MFA is worth the change?
A: Choose passwordless MFA when phishing resistance, account takeover reduction, and predictable user completion matter more than preserving password-based recovery flows.
A: A control is failing when the attacker can capture a valid token in transit and reuse it before the legitimate user notices.
Practitioner guidance
- Audit factor independence Map each MFA method to the actual compromise paths that can defeat it, including SMS interception, mailbox takeover, password reuse, and recovery channel abuse.
- Reduce shared-secret reliance Replace password-plus-code designs where possible with device-bound cryptographic authentication and biometric confirmation, and remove backup secrets from the primary flow.
- Review recovery and fallback flows Check whether account reset, enrollment, and step-up paths quietly reintroduce passwords or one-time codes as the effective second factor.
Bottom line: One-time codes can look like MFA while still inheriting the weaknesses of SMS, email, and password reuse.
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This topic was modified 5 days ago by NHI Mgmt Group
08/10/2026 5:05 pm
One-time codes are a delivery-dependent control, not a durable authentication factor. Their strength varies with SMS routing, email security, device access, and the password state of the receiving account. That means the security label can overstate the actual assurance provided. The practitioner conclusion is simple: treat code delivery as part of the attack surface, not as proof of factor independence.
A few things that frame the scale:
- Across one million observed logins, 1 in 4 were password-based rather than SSO, 2 in 5 were not protected by MFA and 1 in 5 used a weak, breached or reused password.
A question worth separating out:
Q: Should organisations keep SMS or email codes as a backup factor?
A: Only if the backup is tightly limited and the risk is acceptable, because both channels can be weaker than teams assume. In many environments, they are better treated as transitional or recovery mechanisms than as a preferred MFA design. The safer default is a phishing-resistant primary factor with minimal secret exposure.
👉 Read our full editorial: Passwordless MFA vs one-time codes: why auth risk still matters