Passwords look cheap because nobody sends an invoice for them. The real bill arrives through help desk queues, lost work hours, and breach recovery. Finance leaders rarely see those costs grouped in one place. That gap makes passwords appear far more affordable than they really are. For background, see our recent coverage.
Passkeys change the equation for companies willing to measure it. They remove the shared secret that attackers steal and employees forget. The result is fewer tickets, faster sign-ins, and a smaller attack surface. This article breaks down the numbers security and finance teams need to build the case.
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The Hidden Price of Password Resets
Every forgotten password triggers a small chain of costs. An employee stops working and contacts support. A technician verifies identity, resets the credential, and closes the ticket. Each step takes time that nobody budgets for directly.
Forrester has long estimated that a single password reset costs an enterprise around $70. That figure covers help desk labor, not the productivity lost while staff wait. Multiply it across thousands of workers and several resets each year. The total quickly reaches six figures for a mid-size organization.
Frontline industries feel this pain even more sharply. Shift workers in manufacturing, healthcare, and retail often share devices and rotate between stations. A locked account at shift start can delay an entire production line. Those delays rarely appear in IT budgets, yet operations managers notice them immediately.
Password resets are a recurring operating expense, not a one-time inconvenience. Treating them that way changes how leaders view the investment. Once the true cost is visible, the case for an alternative becomes easier to make. The next question is what that alternative actually saves.
What the Data Says About Passkey Savings
Hard numbers now exist to replace the vague promises of earlier years. The FIDO Alliance published its first Passkey Index in October 2025. It pooled real deployment data from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Target, and TikTok. The findings give business leaders a credible benchmark to work from.
- Sign-in success reached 93%, compared with 63% for other methods.
- Login time fell by 73%, from 31.2 seconds to 8.5 seconds.
- Login-related help desk incidents dropped by up to 81%.
- Passkey enrollment reached 36% of accounts across participating services.
These figures come from consumer platforms, but the lesson transfers to workforce settings. Fewer failed logins mean fewer calls to support. Faster sign-ins return minutes to every employee on every shift. Across a large workforce, those minutes add up to meaningful capacity.
The data points to one clear conclusion. Passkeys reduce support volume while improving the daily experience of signing in. That combination is rare in security, where stronger controls usually add friction. Here, the more secure option is also the more efficient one.
Reducing Breach Risk at the Source
Help desk savings are only half of the business case. The larger financial exposure sits in data breaches. Stolen credentials remain one of the most common ways attackers get inside. Removing them changes the risk profile of the entire organization.
IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report put the global average breach at $4.44 million. In the United States, the average climbed to a record $10.22 million. Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report found credential abuse as the entry point in 22% of breaches. Those numbers turn credential security into a board-level concern.
Passkeys close this door because there is no secret to steal. Each credential uses a key pair, and the private key never leaves the device. Understanding how passkeys authentication works helps leaders explain this shift to boards and budget holders. A phishing site cannot trick the device, since each passkey is bound to its genuine domain.
Fewer stealable credentials mean fewer successful attacks. Fewer attacks mean lower recovery costs, legal exposure, and reputational damage. Security spending then shifts from cleanup toward prevention. That shift is exactly what finance teams want to see.
Where the Savings Are Largest
Not every group of users delivers the same return. The biggest gains come where password friction is highest. That usually means large, distributed workforces with frequent logins. Frontline teams sit at the top of that list.
Think of a nurse signing into shared workstations dozens of times per shift. A warehouse picker faces the same problem when moving between handheld scanners. Typing complex passwords in these settings wastes time and invites shortcuts like shared accounts. Shared logins then undermine audit trails and compliance.
Passkeys and other phishing-resistant methods work well in these environments when paired correctly. Badge taps, face authentication, and device-bound credentials let each worker sign in individually. Every action ties back to a real person rather than a shared login. That accountability matters in regulated sectors like healthcare, food production, and pharmaceuticals.
Organizations should prioritize these high-friction groups in their rollout plans. They deliver the fastest payback and the most visible wins. Early success with frontline teams also builds momentum for wider adoption. Leaders can then point to real results when expanding the program.
Building the Business Case Internally
Strong numbers still need a clear story to win budget approval. Decision makers want to see costs, savings, and risks side by side. A simple framework keeps the conversation focused. The steps below help structure that discussion.
- Measure current password reset volume and average handling time.
- Estimate productivity lost to login delays across each user group.
- Calculate breach exposure using industry benchmarks and internal risk data.
- Compare total costs against licensing, hardware, and rollout expenses.
- Define success metrics before the pilot begins.
A pilot with one high-volume team often provides the most persuasive evidence. It replaces projections with real numbers from inside the business. Most vendors can support a limited rollout without a major upfront commitment. Those early results usually make the wider investment an easy decision.
The Bottom Line
Passwords carry costs that most budgets never capture in one place. Help desk tickets, lost hours, and breach exposure all trace back to the same weak credential. Passkeys address all three problems at once. That makes them one of the rare security upgrades that pays for itself.
The data from early adopters is already clear. Companies that move now will spend less on support and face fewer credential-based attacks. Those that wait will keep paying the hidden password tax. For most enterprises, the business case is ready to present today.
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