Your team locks everything down with passwords. Some are strong, some are… let’s say optimistic. Most have been reused somewhere over the years. Every month, IT fields another round of reset requests. Every year, the same breach reports land — and stolen credentials top the list every single time.
There’s a better way. And the best part? It doesn’t require your users to memorise anything at all.
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’s practical, it’s already supported by most major platforms, and if you’re working with a good Managed IT or Managed Services provider, the groundwork is probably already in place.
Why Passwords Are Still the Biggest Risk
Passwords have had sixty years to prove themselves. The data has a consistent story to tell.
More than 80% of data breaches involve compromised credentials — a figure that has stayed stubbornly consistent year after year, according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. The underlying problem hasn’t changed: passwords are shared secrets that must be stored somewhere, and secrets that get stored eventually get stolen.
Multi-factor authentication reduced that risk significantly, and it remains an important baseline. But SMS-based codes — still the most common form of MFA — have a well-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, then 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 a login on your real device, because the credential is cryptographically bound to the legitimate domain.
In other words: no legitimate domain, no login. Full stop.
What a Passkey Actually Is
A passkey is a cryptographic credential. Instead of a shared password stored on a server somewhere, 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 can’t be phished, because a fraudulent login page can’t trigger authentication on your real device. It can’t be reused, because it’s bound to a specific domain. And it can’t be exposed in a server-side breach, because the private key never exists outside your device.
Passkeys are built on the FIDO2 and WebAuthn open standards, backed jointly by Apple, Google, and Microsoft. The FIDO Alliance reports 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 isn’t a single cutover event. It’s a gradual transition that runs passwords and passkeys in parallel until passkeys are established across the accounts and platforms that matter most.
A migration plan typically covers three things:
- Which platforms already support passkeys
- Which users to start with
- What fallback options exist for tools that aren’t ready yet
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 any new infrastructure at all.
How to Approach Migration Without Disrupting Your Team
Start Where Support Already Exists
Begin with administrators and power users. They reset passwords most often, carry the highest-risk access, and will give you honest, practical 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 there. Leave unsupported tools for a later phase — and don’t let perfect be the enemy of progress.
Run Passwords and Passkeys in Parallel
The most common migration mistake is treating it as a hard 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 everyone time to adopt without locking anyone out mid-project. For businesses in Brisbane and Mackay managing mixed-device environments or remote teams, this parallel approach makes the transition far less disruptive.
Plan for Platforms That Aren’t Ready Yet
Not every tool supports passkeys today — and that’s okay.
For those platforms, a password manager generating unique credentials is the right bridge. It eliminates the password reuse risk now, and when those platforms eventually add passkey support, migration becomes a single enrollment step rather than a behaviour 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. 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. Fewer interruptions. Less time your IT Support team spends on resets that add no value to anyone.
There’s also a compliance angle worth noting. NIST’s 2025 update to SP 800-63-4 now requires phishing-resistant authentication as a mandatory option for high-assurance access — which means passkey migration is also a compliance step for teams working toward those standards.
From Password-Dependent to Passwordless
Passwords have done their job. It’s time to retire them properly.
Whether you’re managing a growing team in Brisbane, supporting remote staff across Mackay, or simply trying to reduce the weekly volume of reset requests, passkey migration is one of the highest-impact security improvements you can make — and it’s more straightforward than most people expect.
Get in touch with us to map out which platforms in your environment support passkeys today and build a migration plan that actually works for your team.
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