Should organisations keep password controls after deploying passkeys?

Why This Matters for Security Teams

Passkeys change the primary user authentication story, but they do not automatically eliminate password risk across the estate. Legacy applications, service accounts, break-glass paths, and vendor portals can still accept passwords long after the main workforce has moved to passkeys. That means password controls remain relevant for policy, monitoring, and exception management while the transition is still in progress. NIST’s NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 treats identity as an ongoing control area, not a one-time migration event.

The operational mistake is assuming passkey rollout equals password retirement. In reality, attackers often target the weakest remaining path, not the strongest default path. If one application still accepts passwords, password spraying, credential stuffing, and recycled breach credentials remain viable. NHIMG’s Ultimate Guide to NHIs — Standards also shows how broad identity exposure persists when governance is incomplete, especially where credentials, secrets, and exceptions are spread across systems.

In practice, many security teams discover the real password problem only after a forgotten application, privileged exception, or exposed credential has already been abused.

How It Works in Practice

The right model is staged reduction. Organisations should keep password controls in place until they can verify that passwords are no longer accepted in any material workflow, administrative path, or fallback process. That means more than disabling interactive login for most users. It also means reviewing identity providers, conditional access rules, privileged access workflows, third-party integrations, and recovery procedures that may still depend on passwords.

Strong password governance during the transition usually includes:

• Discovering every application and service that still accepts password-based authentication.
• Enforcing MFA or passkeys first, then tightening password policy where passwords must remain.
• Monitoring for reused, leaked, or stale passwords in breach intelligence and authentication logs.
• Removing password fallback from help desk and account recovery paths wherever possible.
• Applying stricter controls to privileged accounts, break-glass accounts, and legacy admin consoles.

For passwordless programmes, the governance issue is not only user login. It is also the residual attack surface created by exceptions. NIST guidance supports reducing authentication risk through stronger identity assurance, but current guidance suggests that organisations should not turn off password controls until they have clear evidence that no material dependency remains. NHIMG’s Ultimate Guide to NHIs — Standards is useful here because many password-like risks reappear as secrets sprawl, weak offboarding, and unmanaged exceptions across systems.

These controls tend to break down in hybrid estates where older applications, contractor access, and shared administrative tooling still require password-based recovery or emergency login.

Common Variations and Edge Cases

Tighter password controls often increase user friction and help desk demand, so organisations must balance reduced attack surface against operational continuity. That tradeoff is especially visible during migration periods, when some teams are passkey-enabled and others are not.

There is no universal standard for when password controls can be retired completely. Best practice is evolving, but the usual threshold is not “passkeys are deployed” so much as “passwords are eliminated from all material access paths.” Edge cases include:

• Legacy SaaS platforms that cannot support passkeys or modern federation.
• Privileged break-glass accounts that need tightly controlled emergency fallback.
• Service and machine identities that do not use passkeys at all and still require secret governance.
• External portals and supply chain systems that remain password-only despite internal modernization.

In those environments, password policy should become narrower and more defensive, not disappear. That usually means longer minimum lengths, blocklists, leak checks, and aggressive monitoring until every remaining dependency is retired. The practical rule is simple: remove passwords only where the business has verified they are no longer a live control plane for access.

Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group

• Should organisations keep enterprise password managers after passkey adoption starts?
• Why do compromised credentials remain dangerous even after a password reset?
• How should organisations use FIDO2 keys for attendance tracking without weakening identity controls?
• What breaks when password screening happens only after a breach?