Cisco plans to roll out its Duo Passwordless Authentication globally next Wednesday. This push is in line with the findings from Duo Security’s recent report which showed that passwordless adoption continues to climb.

The service allows users to log in without a password using platform authenticators such as Windows Hello, Apple’s Touch ID and Face ID, and Google’s face and fingerprint biometrics, as well as security tokens and keys including YubiKey Duo Single Sign-On, and Duo Push authentication, Cisco Duo Security Advisory CISO J. Wolfgang Goerlich told SDxCentral.

Duo Mobile app is the latest option for passwordless authentication, which includes mobile app push and biometrics which were enabled on 81% of Duo customers’ mobile devices, according to Cisco.

In addition, Duo Passwordless Authentication supports customers who use Duo Single Sign On (SSO) or existing SSO from other providers such as Okta or PingFederate.

Goerlich noted that the service will improve the user experience on login by removing the “long-hated” password and reducing the authentication friction while increasing the pressure on the adversary and the complexity needed to carry out a successful attack.

He also encourages organizations to adopt passwordless as part of their zero-trust journey. “Passwordless authentication, more broadly, reducing the friction and the user experience, is the key user benefit in a zero-trust business case,” Goerlich said. “As part of a combined [zero-trust] strategy, passwordless along with risk-based authentication is what provides the end user a better experience at the same time we're ratcheting up security controls that are largely invisible to them.”

For the passwordless roadmap, adopting strong multi-factor authentication (MFA) should be the first step to reduce large attack vectors including stolen passwords and credentials, and the next step is integrating passwordless solutions with SSO, he explained.

Partnering with the Cyentia Institute, Cisco Duo Security analyzes data from over 13 billion authentications on nearly 50 million devices, more than 490 thousand unique applications, and around 1.1 billion monthly authentications across its global customer base.

The 2022 Duo Trusted Access Report found that MFA adoption continues to hold strong with a 38% increase in MFA authentication using Duo over the past year.

It also shows that accounts allowing web authentication (WebAuthn) rose 50% and a fivefold increase in usage since April 2019.

The surging passwordless adoption is driven by easier-to-use, an increase in devices and equipment with biometrics, and standardization set up for WebAuthn and passwordless.

“We're starting to reach a tipping point where the hardware is ubiquitous, the standards are in place, and enough services support the standards, and that's really driving that increase that we see in web authentications. So now … organizations can adopt them with confidence,” Goerlich said.