Passkeys remove reusable secrets from login, but they do not eliminate weaker alternate paths attached to the same account. Attackers target those fallback paths because they are usually easier to socially engineer or intercept than the passkey itself. The account is only as secure as the weakest recovery method.
Why This Matters for Security Teams
Passkeys remove phishing-prone reusable secrets from the primary login path, but account takeover risk does not disappear when the primary authenticator improves. Attackers simply move to recovery channels, session reauthentication, help desk workflows, device enrollment, or legacy password fallback that still sit behind the same account. That is why passkey deployment must be assessed as part of the full identity lifecycle, not as a single control that closes the problem.
This is consistent with the NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 emphasis on protecting the full identity plane, not only the login event. NHIMG research shows how often hidden identity weaknesses persist in practice: the Ultimate Guide to NHIs notes that 71% of NHIs are not rotated within recommended time frames, a reminder that weak lifecycle governance outlives a single authentication method. In the same way, consumer and enterprise accounts often inherit recovery paths that are easier to exploit than the primary authenticator.
In practice, many security teams encounter account takeover only after a fallback channel has already been abused, rather than through intentional testing of recovery and support workflows.
How It Works in Practice
Passkeys improve resistance to credential phishing because they are bound to the origin and use cryptographic challenge response instead of a shared secret. The limitation is that most account systems are composite, not singular. A user may still have SMS recovery, email resets, support-assisted identity proofing, old passwords, backup codes, device transfer flows, or delegated admin paths. If any one of those paths is weaker than the passkey, the attacker will target that path.
Security teams should map the account as an end-to-end trust chain. That includes enrollment, authentication, recovery, device replacement, session refresh, and privilege escalation. The practical questions are simple: can a fallback be intercepted, social engineered, or replayed; can it be rate limited; does it require step-up verification; and is it revoked when a user changes devices? NIST guidance increasingly treats identity assurance as lifecycle-oriented, while NHIMG guidance on the Top 10 NHI Issues reinforces the same operational lesson for machine identities: strong secrets do not help if governance around issuance and revocation is weak.
- Remove password fallback where the business can support passkey-only or passkey-first access.
- Harden recovery with step-up checks, high-friction review, and short-lived recovery tokens.
- Monitor account recovery events as high-risk signals, not routine help desk requests.
- Bind device changes to fresh verification and revoke old sessions immediately.
For teams building policy around this, the same control logic appears in the OWASP NHI Top 10: the security outcome depends on the weakest adjacent workflow, not the strongest credential. These controls tend to break down in large enterprises with legacy SSO, shared support queues, and inconsistent identity proofing because recovery paths remain fragmented across systems.
Common Variations and Edge Cases
Tighter recovery controls often increase support cost and user friction, so organisations must balance takeover resistance against account recovery speed. That tradeoff is real, especially for consumer-facing services, regulated environments, and high-availability internal platforms where lockout has business impact.
Best practice is evolving, but current guidance suggests a tiered approach. High-risk accounts should use passkeys plus strong recovery controls, while lower-risk environments can tolerate more fallback only if those channels are monitored and time-limited. Accounts used by admins, finance, or developers deserve stricter treatment because takeover impact is disproportionately high. Multi-device passkey sync can also reduce resilience if device trust is not separately validated, since compromising a synced device may expose multiple accounts at once.
Another edge case is delegated access. If a platform allows one user to recover another user’s account, the attacker may target the delegator instead of the victim. Support staff, identity proofing vendors, and external help desk processes become part of the attack surface. The Ultimate Guide to NHIs highlights how hidden identity paths accumulate risk over time, and the same pattern applies here: account takeover often succeeds through an overlooked alternate route, not the passkey itself.
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 NIST CSF 2.0 and NIST AI RMF set the governance and control requirements practitioners need to meet.
| Framework | Control / Reference | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| OWASP Non-Human Identity Top 10 | NHI-03 | Weak recovery paths mirror poor secret lifecycle control and revocation. |
| NIST CSF 2.0 | PR.AA-1 | Identity proofing and authentication must cover recovery, not only login. |
| NIST AI RMF | Governance should account for lifecycle and misuse risks across identity flows. |
Inventory every fallback path and revoke or shorten any recovery credential that outlives the primary authenticator.
Related resources from NHI Mgmt Group
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Reviewed and updated by the NHIMG editorial team on June 23, 2026.
NHI Mgmt Group — the #1 independent authority on Non-Human Identity, IAM, and Agentic AI security. nhimg.org
