What Is Password-free Authentication?
The Definitive Guide for Modern Businesses
What Is Identity Verification?
At its core, identity verification is about answering a simple question: Is the person trying to get access really who they say they are?
The methods we use to identify have changed dramatically in the last decade. Traditionally, the answer was a password. The assumption was that if you knew the secret, you must be the right person. That worked when people had one or two accounts, and the systems they were logging into were not mission-critical. But as organizations digitized, the average employee accumulated dozens of logins. Contractors, consultants, and temporary workers had their own sets of accounts. IT teams became responsible for handing out, resetting, and auditing thousands of passwords. What began as a convenience became a liability.
Today, identity verification is no longer about what people remember. It's about what they can prove. Instead of typing in a password, a user can confirm identity with something they have, like a BankID app or a cryptographic key on their device, or something they are, like a fingerprint or facial scan. This shift means that organizations are moving from knowledge-based access to trust-based access.
For CTOs and IT managers, this matters because the old model is breaking under pressure. Password resets clog the helpdesk queue. Weak passwords open the door to attackers. Regulations like GDPR demand auditable, secure identity management. Identity verification using trusted providers or device-based credentials answers all three challenges at once. It reduces IT overhead, strengthens security, and creates a log of verified access for auditors.
For CIOs, identity verification is a strategic concern. Access management is how the organization protects data, serves customers, and stays compliant with regulators. When identity verification fails, the whole digital strategy is at risk. Moving away from passwords is therefore not just about efficiency, but about resilience and trust. A CIO who prioritizes modern identity verification is investing in the foundation of the digital workplace.
For HR leaders, identity verification may sound like a technical detail, but it directly shapes the employee experience. The first day on the job sets the tone for how someone feels about the company. When onboarding is smooth, with instant access to the systems they need, employees feel confident and valued.
When, on the other hand, onboarding is delayed because IT is struggling to set up accounts, frustration sets in. Passwordless verification makes onboarding fast and secure. It also supports workforce flexibility, enabling contractors and consultants to contribute immediately without complicated setup.
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Password-free Identity Verification – The Future Is Now
Password-free identity verification is not a theoretical improvement. It's already here. In Norway, millions of people use BankID or Vipps daily to access banking, government services, and payments. Extending those familiar tools into the workplace reduces friction and builds trust. Globally, standards like FIDO2 and WebAuthn allow companies to issue device-based credentials that can't be phished or reused.
These approaches represent the future of access: simple for employees, scalable for IT, and secure for the business.
Why Passwords Fail To Deliver
Passwords, in the past, were the best way of verification. Remember a secret, type it in, and gain access. But the reality is that they no longer protect organizations effectively. Their weaknesses are well documented across security research, industry reports, and countless breach investigations. For modern businesses, continuing to rely on them is like locking the front door while leaving the windows open.
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Passwords Are Easy To Expose
From a security perspective, passwords are one of the most exploited attack vectors. The Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report identifies weak or stolen credentials as a top cause of breaches. Users are lured into giving out passwords through phishing emails that run credential stuffing attacks, recycling stolen credentials from one service into another. They brute-force weak passwords with automated tools. Once a password is exposed, the attacker often gains unrestricted access. This makes passwords a liability, not a safeguard.
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Resetting Passwords Is A Hidden Cost
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Operationally, passwords are an efficiency drain. Gartner estimates that between 30 and 50 percent of all IT helpdesk calls are password-related. Each reset might take five to ten minutes of staff time, plus the lost productivity of the employee locked out. In large enterprises, this can add up to thousands of resets every year. The hidden cost is enormous. It means skilled employees spend hours on repetitive, low-value work and IT budgets consumed by operations instead of innovation.
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Frustrated Employees Reflects Poorly On the Organisation
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From the user's perspective, passwords create frustration. Employees are asked to follow complex policies: long strings with uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and symbols, rotated every 60 or 90 days. Instead of improving security, this leads to insecure behavior. People write them down. They reuse them across multiple systems. They choose predictable patterns. The harder the rules, the worse the compliance. Employees don't see value in a process that slows them down while doing little to keep them safe. For HR leaders, this frustration is part of the employee experience and reflects poorly on the organization.
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Password-free Verification Balances Security and Compliance
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Regulatory requirements make the situation worse. Being compliant with different standards regarding GDPR, ISO 27001, and SOC2 demands strong identity and access management practices. Password-based resets and shared credentials often fail audits. As a result, Compliance officers put more pressure on IT to fix processes, leading to stricter rules that further frustrate employees.
The result is a vicious cycle of more complexity, more frustration, and no real improvement in security.
Passwords fail because they are a single point of weakness. They can be guessed, stolen, or forgotten. It's a waste of time and money; trust in IT systems is eroded. For an organization trying to balance security, compliance, and user experience, they are the wrong tool for the job.
That is why the shift to more innovative forms of identity verification is not optional—it is necessary.
Everyday Access Problems
​​If you ask employees what slows them down most often, access is near the top of the list. The simple act of logging in has turned into a recurring pain point that affects productivity, security, and morale. For organizations, these problems pile up into measurable costs. For IT, they show up as endless support tickets. For HR, they damage the employee experience before it even begins.
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Account Onboarding Delays Cost Time and Money
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One of the most visible issues is onboarding delays. A new hire arrives eager to get started, but discovers that their account is not ready. This could be due to a leader failing to inform IT about the need for a new account and temporary password, it may be due to an overworked IT department, or maybe they sent a password, but it does not work. The new employee spends the morning waiting for support, unable to access the necessary tools. This is a terrible first impression and a waste of resources. In industries where time is money, such as consulting or healthcare, a slow start translates directly into lost value. For HR, it undermines the effort put into recruitment. For IT, it is one more example of a preventable bottleneck.
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Contractors and Temps Needing Short-term Access
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The challenge is even sharper with contractors and temporary workers. They are often brought in to meet urgent deadlines or cover short-term needs. Yet they face the same bottlenecks as permanent staff. IT has to issue accounts manually, set up temporary credentials, and manage access removal at the end of the contract. In practice, this means contractors may wait days to get access, wasting both their time and the organization's resources. HR teams often find themselves juggling paperwork and access issues, rather than focusing on value creation.
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Forgotten Credentials As The Status Quo
Research from NordPass in 2023 found that the average employee manages around 100 different accounts across work and personal life. No one can remember that many passwords, especially when policies demand frequent changes. Inevitably, people forget, and the result is access fatigue, the silent cost of all these interruptions. Employees grow tired of complex login requirements, and a workforce frustrated with access is a workforce that looks for shortcuts.
The solution many turn to; writing passwords on sticky notes, reusing the same credentials across systems, and opting for weak password alternatives to be able to remember them, undermines security. They call IT, wait for a reset, and lose half an hour or more. According to Forrester, the average enterprise spends millions each year on password-related helpdesk requests. This means skilled staff spend hours every week unlocking accounts instead of solving strategic challenges. Also it shows up as shadow IT, policy violations and risk exposure.
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Lost Or Broken Devices
A Phone that is lost or damaged, a laptop becoming outdated, or a tablet needing to be replaced? In a traditional password-based model, setting up a new device often means a manual reset process. Employees spend days waiting for IT to restore access. Meanwhile, critical projects are delayed. The risk is not only downtime but compliance: regulators expect companies to maintain continuity and auditability even during incidents. When device setup becomes a roadblock, compliance and business resilience are both at risk.
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​​​None of these issues are rare. They are part of daily life in almost every medium to large organization. They consume time, create stress, and weaken trust. The cost is cumulative: lost productivity, wasted hours for IT, reputational risk for leadership, and compliance headaches for auditors.
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Password-free Verification As The Solution
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Modern identity verification exists to solve these very problems.
Going password-free, implementing password free methods, reduces access fatigue, lowers IT costs, and gives employees a smoother experience.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
Secure, Familiar and Easy Identity Verification
Instead of asking people to remember secrets, password-free identity verification uses trusted methods that are already widely adopted to confirm identity.
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Utilise Familiar Metods
In Norway, BankID is one of the strongest examples. More than 4 million Norwegians use it for banking, payments, and government services. Its trust level is high because it is backed by the financial sector and regulated by national authorities. Extending that same trusted method to workplace access makes sense: employees use a tool they already know, and the organization benefits from proven security.
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ID-porten is another familiar solution. It is the gateway to digital government services in Norway, used by millions every year to file taxes or access health records. Integrating ID-porten into corporate access systems creates continuity between public and private digital services.
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Vipps offers a consumer-friendly approach. Known primarily for payments, Vipps has become a trusted brand in Norway for simple, fast digital interactions. Using it for workplace logins taps into that familiarity and reduces the learning curve.
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Across the Nordics, similar solutions exist.
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BankID in Sweden has reached over 8 million users and is the de facto standard for both public and private digital services.
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MitID is the Danish national identity solution used for everything from banking to healthcare.
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The Finnish Trust Network (FTN) provides a regulated framework for electronic identification in Finland.
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These systems share the same principles as the Norwegian ones: high adoption, strong regulatory backing, and they are well-known and familiar to people.
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FIDO2 and WebAuthn are gaining traction globally. These allow organizations to use device-based cryptographic keys for authentication. A laptop or smartphone becomes the credential, activated by a fingerprint or face scan. Nothing is transmitted that can be phished. Nothing is stored that can be reused. For security teams, this eliminates one of the biggest attack vectors.
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This model of identity verification automates trust and integrates with existing infrastructure. It is simpler because it removes the need for complex policies and resets. It is safer because it eliminates the attacker's most effective tool.
The Business Case for Password-free Verification
When organizations discuss access management, the conversation often becomes technical. But the business impact of moving from passwords to modern identity verification is not abstract. It is measurable in hours saved, costs reduced, risks lowered, and employee satisfaction improved.
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Productivity
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Onboarding delays are a drain on both morale and output. With password free verification, employees use trusted services to log in instantly. Onboarding contractors and temporary staff in the same way is particularly valuable in industries where external workers play a key role in projects. Instead of wasting time on logistics, people start contributing from day one. This creates a better first impression and a smoother employee journey. Also, it eliminates the scramble to issue and reset temporary passwords. All in all, it translates into real productivity gains.
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IT Efficiency And Compliance
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Gartner has reported that 30 to 50 percent of IT helpdesk calls are tied to passwords. Password-free verification eliminates the time waste, allowing IT to focus on more strategic projects. This shift moves IT from being reactive to proactive. Compliance is another area where password free identity pays dividends. Regulators in Europe and globally are tightening rules regarding access management.
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Traditional password resets and shared credentials fail to meet the new standards regulated in GDPR, ISO 27001, and SOC2. Documentation that only the correct individual accessed the systems in question at a given time is required. Auditors want verifiable identity logs tied to strong identification verification, which national identity services like BankID and MitID provide. This makes audits smoother and reduces the risk of penalties.
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Why Are Passwords A Weak Identification Method?
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Passwords are weak because they can be stolen or guessed. According to IBM's 2023 Cost of a Data Breach report, the average breach on a global basis now costs $ 4.45 million. One of the leading causes is compromised credentials. Eliminating passwords removes the attacker's most common entry point. Phishing emails, where attackers try to get employees to give up credentials, become far less effective as there are no passwords to steal.
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The business case for password-free identity extends beyond just saving IT costs or improving security. It is about aligning the digital workplace with how people already live and work. Employees expect the same simplicity they use with online banking or mobile payments. Organizations that meet that expectation see higher engagement and smoother operations—those who don't risk being left behind.
Password free identity verification ties directly to strategic priorities: efficiency, compliance, and security. It delivers a clear return on investment while improving the employee experience. For HR, CIOs, and CTOs alike, it addresses issues they each feel in different ways but that ultimately stem from the same outdated model.
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Three Core Use Cases
The strongest argument for modern identity verification is not theory but practice. Every organization deals with three recurring access scenarios: onboarding, account recovery, and device setup. These are the points where security, productivity, and employee experience intersect—and where the weaknesses of passwords are most visible. password free verification resolves each one directly.
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Onboarding
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Onboarding is often the first real test of how well an organization manages access. A new hire walks in excited to start, but if they spend the morning waiting for IT to issue a temporary password, the experience quickly turns sour. Contractors and temporary staff face the same hurdle, often with even less patience because their contracts are short and project-driven. In consulting, healthcare, and construction, time lost on day one is billable work that never gets recovered. With password free verification, this entire scenario changes. A new employee logs in using BankID, Vipps, MitID, or another trusted service already on their phone. A contractor joining a two-week project verifies their identity using the same tool. There is no need for IT to generate, send, and reset temporary passwords. The result is an onboarding process that is faster, more secure, and far more professional.
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Account Recovery
Employees often forget passwords, especially after holidays or when returning from leave. Contractors who only log in occasionally may struggle even more. Each forgotten credential ends up as an IT support ticket. With password-free verification, recovery becomes seamless. Instead of waiting for IT, the employee confirms identity with a trusted provider like ID-porten or BankID. Within minutes, access is restored. No manual intervention, no downtime, no security loopholes. This means fewer tickets and more bandwidth to focus on long-term improvements. Also, it removes one of the most frustrating barriers in an employee's workday and demonstrates compliance with regulations that require strong, auditable recovery processes.
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Device Setup
Devices are lost, stolen, or replaced every year. Restoring access takes time. Identity must be validated, and passwords reset. During this time, the employee is effectively unable to do their work. In regulated sectors like finance or healthcare, the risk is not only downtime but compliance breaches when passwords are distributed manually in sticky notes, SMS, or emails. Password-free verification enables employees to verify their identity using a familiar identity verification system, and the new device is registered immediately. The transition takes minutes, not days. Productivity is maintained, compliance is preserved, and IT avoids yet another repetitive reset task.
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Across these three use cases, the value of password-free identity verification is consistent: less friction, lower cost, and stronger security. It means scalable solutions that handle the realities of modern work, systems that align with strategic priorities and regulatory expectations, and smoother onboarding, happier employees, and a workforce that can focus on its job instead of its login.
Frequently Asked Questions
When companies consider moving away from passwords, the same questions come up in every conversation. CTOs want to know about security. CIOs care about compliance and system integration. HR leaders ask how employees will adapt. These are valid concerns, and they deserve clear answers.
Is password free verification secure?
Compared to traditional login, password-free verification reduces the risk of credential theft. According to the FIDO Alliance, it reduces the risk of credential theft by more than 99%. Eliminating the most common attack vector and reducing overall risk exposure, services like BankID, ID-porten, Vipps, MitID, and FTN are designed to withstand phishing, credential theft, and brute-force attacks. Instead of storing a secret that can be stolen, they rely on cryptographic keys that cannot be intercepted.
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Does it work with our existing systems?
Yes. password free methods integrate with leading platforms like Microsoft Entra ID ( former Azure Active Directory), Okta, and Ping Identity. They can be introduced gradually, starting with one department or group of users, and scaled across the organization. This means companies don't need to rip out existing infrastructure. Instead, password free verification becomes an additional layer that strengthens what is already in place. This is important because it minimizes disruption, allowing the rollout to be staged and controlled.
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What happens if someone loses their device?
In a password-based model, a lost device often triggers a long reset process. With password free verification, the process is quicker and safer. The user confirms their identity with BankID, Vipps, MitID, and the new device is activated within minutes, removing the need for manual reset work and reducing stress for employees. Also, it ensures continuity and compliance.
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How is adoption for employees?
As employees are already familiar with the methods used, adoption is easy and quick. Millions of people in the Nordics use BankID or Vipps every day for banking, payments, and government services. Asking them to log in at work with the same tool feels natural and poses a significant advantage: little training, few complaints, and a smooth employee experience.
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Is it expensive to implement?
There are costs to adopting any new technology, but the return on investment is clear. Password resets cost between USD 15 and USD 70 each when helpdesk time and lost productivity are included. Large organizations may process thousands of these every year. By eliminating most of them, password free identity verification often pays for itself within months. Add in the reduced risk of breaches—which IBM estimates cost an average of USD 4.45 million globally in 2023—and the financial case is even stronger. This is a budget discussion that aligns security with efficiency.
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Will regulators accept password free methods?
Yes. In fact, regulators increasingly expect strong, auditable authentication. GDPR, ISO 27001, and SOC2 all emphasize verified identity and secure access management. National identity providers like BankID and MitID are recognized as compliant, high-assurance methods, making audits smooth and reducing the risk of fines or findings.
Next Step: Best Practices
Passwords fail organizations and
increasingly pose a security risk. The
alternative is already in use across the Nordics: trusted identity providers like BankID, Vipps, ID-porten, and MitID. Combined with global standards like FIDO2, they offer a way to confirm identity that is simple, scalable, and safe.
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The case is clear: fewer tickets, fewer vulnerabilities, and better system resilience. password free identity aligns directly with the strategic goals of digital transformation, compliance, and risk management, improving onboarding, reducing stress, and creating a smoother experience.
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The real question is not whether to move away from passwords, but how to do it in a way that works for your organization. Implementation requires a phased plan, integration with existing platforms, and clear communication to employees.
Want to learn more about going password-free?
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