What is Passkey Migration and How Can It Help Your Team Eliminate Passwords?

Your team locks everything down with passwords. Some are strong, some are not, and most have been reused somewhere over the years. Every month, IT fields reset requests. Every year, the same breach reports list stolen credentials as the leading cause.

There is now a more effective path, and it does not require users to memorize anything. 

Passkey migration is the process of moving from traditional passwords to passkeys: a form of phishing-resistant authentication that uses your device’s built-in security instead of a shared secret. 

It is practical, it is already supported by most major platforms, and the business case is hard to argue with.

Why Passwords Are Still the Biggest Risk

Passwords have had sixty years to prove themselves. The data tells a consistent story.

More than 80% of data breaches involve compromised credentials, a figure that has remained consistent year after year, according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report.

The underlying problem has not changed: passwords are shared secrets that must be stored somewhere, and secrets that get stored eventually get stolen.

Multi-factor authentication (MFA) reduced that risk significantly and remains an important baseline. But SMS-based codes, still the most common form of MFA, have a known weakness. 

Modern phishing kits can intercept a one-time code in real time: a convincing fake login page captures both the password and the code, and uses them on the real site before the session expires.

Phishing-resistant authentication closes that gap by design. Passkeys make it technically impossible for a fraudulent page to trigger login on your real device, because the credential is cryptographically bound to the legitimate domain.

What a Passkey Actually Is

A passkey is a cryptographic credential. This means that instead of a shared password stored on a server, your device creates a matched pair of digital keys when you register with a service.

The private key stays on your device and never leaves it. The public key goes to the service. 

When you log in, your device uses biometrics (Face ID, a fingerprint, or Windows Hello) or a device PIN to sign a cryptographic challenge from the server. The server verifies the signature using the public key. No password is ever transmitted.

A passkey cannot be phished, because a fraudulent login page cannot trigger authentication on your real device. It cannot be reused, because it is bound to a specific domain. And it cannot be exposed in a server-side breach, because the private key never exists outside your device.

Passkeys are built on the FIDO2 (Fast IDentity Online 2) and WebAuthn open standards, backed jointly by Apple, Google, and Microsoft. The FIDO Alliance reported that more than 15 billion online accounts now support passkey sign-in, double the figure from the year before.

What Passkey Migration Actually Means

Passkey migration is not a single cutover. It is a gradual transition that runs passwords and passkeys in parallel until passkeys are established across the accounts and platforms that matter.

A migration plan typically covers three things: 

1. Which platforms already support passkeys
2. Which users to start with
3. What fallback options exist for tools that are not yet ready

For most business teams running Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, the infrastructure is already in place.

Microsoft enabled passkeys through Entra ID and made them the default sign-in for new accounts in May 2025. Google has supported passkeys for Workspace accounts since 2023. For teams in either ecosystem, passkey migration can begin without new infrastructure.

How to Approach Migration Without Disrupting Your Team

Start where support already exists

Begin with administrators and power users. They reset passwords most often, have the highest-risk access, and will give you honest feedback on friction before rollout reaches the wider team.

Map your current tools against passkey support before communicating any change. 

Platforms like Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, GitHub, Shopify, and most major identity providers already support passkeys fully. Start with those. Leave unsupported tools for a later phase.

Run passwords and passkeys in parallel

The most common migration mistake is treating it as a full cutover. 

Users can authenticate with passkeys on enrolled devices and fall back to a password on any device not yet enrolled. Running both methods simultaneously gives time for adoption without locking anyone out mid-project.

Plan for platforms that are not ready yet

Not every tool supports passkeys today. 

For those, a password manager generating unique credentials is the right bridge. It eliminates the password reuse risk now, and when those platforms add passkey support, migration becomes a single enrollment step rather than a behavior change.

The Business Case Beyond Security

Security is the primary driver. But the operational benefits are real and measurable.

Google reports that passkey sign-ins are four times more successful than password-based logins, with sign-in speeds approximately 20% faster.

According to authentication research published by Google, the improvement comes from removing friction. Users no longer mistype passwords, wait for SMS codes, or trigger account lockouts by trying an outdated credential.

Fewer failed logins means fewer helpdesk calls and fewer interruptions. 

NIST’s 2025 update to SP 800-63-4 now requires phishing-resistant authentication as a mandatory option for high-assurance access. This means passkey migration is also a compliance step for teams working toward those standards.

From Password-Dependent to Passwordless

Ready to start your passkey migration? 

Contact us or schedule a consultation to map out which platforms in your environment support passkeys today and build a migration plan that works for your team.

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This Article has been Republished with Permission from The Technology Press.