Does FIDO's promise of passwordless meet the reality of enterprise governance?

Examining FIDO2’s enterprise adoption hurdles in identity enrollment, management, and control

Passwords remain one of the weakest links in digital security—easily reused, phished, and still entrenched in legacy systems. FIDO2 and its evolution, passkeys, replace passwords with authentication rooted in cryptography rather than human memory.

Instead of typing credentials, users confirm their presence via fingerprint, face scan, or device PIN, while their device handles a secure key exchange. Passkeys extend this principle by syncing those credentials across trusted devices, turning passwordless access into an effortless, everyday experience.

For individuals, it means convenience. For enterprises, it offers phishing-resistant access aligned with Zero Trust strategies.

However, FIDO2 was designed for the open web, not for corporate ecosystems where identities are issued, governed, and revoked under policy control. As organizations consider adopting passwordless technologies, the question is shifting from how FIDO2 works to how it can be managed—how enrollment, assurance, and lifecycle control fit within an enterprise trust framework.

Who owns the credential - user or administrator? 

FIDO2 follows a self-managed model: users create their accounts, register their own devices, and generate credentials locally without administrative oversight. Within the consumer world, the model assumes the user is both the owner and the trusted party. In enterprise environments, however, identity issuance operates under strict governance.

Every credential must be verified, approved, and traceable within policy. FIDO2’s decentralized design limits an organization’s ability to control which authenticators are trusted, how they are provisioned, and where keys are stored.

Enterprises can adopt one of two enrollment models:

• User-driven enrollment
  Employees register their own FIDO2 authenticators, such as Windows Hello or a hardware key, through a self-service portal. This approach scales easily but introduces inconsistency: unapproved devices, varied assurance levels, and limited visibility into what has been enrolled.
• Managed enrollment
  Administrators pre-register or approve authenticators to ensure compliance with internal policies. This strengthens control through attestation and policy enforcement but adds operational complexity, as browser privacy settings and uneven attestation support make standardization difficult.

Managed enrollment can also be orchestrated through existing identity infrastructure—linking the enterprise identity manager with directory services such as Microsoft Entra ID. In this setup, the identity system coordinates enrollment workflows, verifies authenticator types, and ensures each FIDO credential is registered and bound to a verified digital identity under policy control.

Authenticator type also affects governance.

• Platform authenticators, built into laptops and smartphones, offer convenience but are difficult to inventory or revoke.
• Roaming authenticators, such as FIDO2 hardware keys, provide stronger administrative oversight and can be issued, replaced, or decommissioned much like physical ID cards.

Ultimately, while the enrollment model determines who holds authority over the credential, the lifecycle management defines how securely that credential can be maintained, rotated, or retired. And that is where many enterprises encounter real friction.

Gaps in effective FIDO2 credential lifecycle management

Unlike traditional certificates that can be centrally revoked or renewed, FIDO2 credentials are device-bound and self-contained. This design prevents credential theft but complicates identity lifecycle management for organizations that must maintain visibility, assurance, and compliance.

These constraints translate into tangible challenges across everyday operations where managing FIDO2 credentials often proves more complex than anticipated.

• Visibility
  There is no standardized way to enumerate all FIDO2 credentials associated with a user or determine their assurance level. Most identity providers expose only partial metadata, leaving administrators without a consolidated inventory of who holds which authenticators, whether they are hardware-backed, or how recently they were used.
• Attestation and auditability
  Browser privacy restrictions often suppress attestation data, making it difficult for enterprises to enforce “approved authenticator only” policies. Logging of FIDO2 events—registration, authentication, de-registration—also varies across platforms, creating fragmented audit trails that complicate compliance with ISO 27001, NIS2, or sector-specific mandates.
• Recovery and replacement
  Because credentials are device-bound, a lost or reset device destroys the private key. Re-enrollment is typically manual. Passkey synchronization, while convenient, relies on personal cloud ecosystems, which often conflict with enterprise data sovereignty and governance policies.
• Revocation
  When an employee leaves, disabling their directory account stops new logins but does not delete or invalidate the private key on the authenticator itself. With no universally adopted revocation standards comparable to CRLs or OCSP in PKI, credentials may remain active beyond enterprise oversight.

To close these gaps, organizations can choose to adopt hybrid trust architectures, integrating FIDO2 within a credential management system (CMS) or privileged access control frameworks. This approach treats FIDO credentials as managed digital assets—issued, tracked, and auditable—while preserving the phishing resistance that makes FIDO2 valuable. Such hybrid models also create a foundation for future interoperability, once standards for revocation, attestation logging, and enterprise audit APIs become more mature.

Evolving toward enterprise-grade passwordless authentication

FIDO2 and passkeys mark an important step toward a passwordless future, moving from shared secrets to device-bound cryptography. To make this shift sustainable, enterprises must ensure that

1. Credentials are issued to verified identities
2. Authenticators meet defined assurance levels, and
3. Each lifecycle stage—issuance, use, rotation, and retirement—is visible and auditable

Without such oversight, even the strongest authentication standard can weaken under operational blind spots or compliance pressure.

Encouragingly, the ecosystem is evolving fast. Identity providers, hardware vendors, and standards bodies are introducing enterprise-managed passkeys, standardized attestation frameworks, and audit-ready APIs that will align usability with enterprise governance.

Hybrid trust models bridge the gap between user convenience and enterprise control. Adopting them today allows enterprises to balance usability with oversight and prepare to operationalize emerging standards as the FIDO ecosystem matures.

Read blog: Meet the demands of modern authentication

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