Look at the major breaches from the past three years. Okta. MGM Resorts, that one cost them $100 million. Every single one started the same way. Not with some movie-style hacking scene where someone breaks through firewalls. With passwords. Stolen passwords. Usually grabbed through methods so basic they're almost embarrassing to explain.
Password-based authentication was designed for 1960s university mainframes. We're now trying to use it to protect applications that handle millions of login attempts daily from attackers in every timezone. To be honest, we still take this seriously in the context of contemporary web application security, which is a little absurd.
We hit a breaking point around 2023. Simply put, most businesses are still unaware of that.
How Credential Attacks Got Ahead of Everything We Built to Stop Them
Credential-based attacks aren't what they used to be. Five years ago, you'd picture some hacker in a hoodie guessing passwords. Now it's industrial. Automated. Boring, even, except for the damage it causes.
Credential Stuffing: It's Not Even Hard Anymore
Credential stuffing works for one simple reason. People reuse passwords.
Everyone knows they shouldn't. I know I shouldn't. Security people have been yelling about it for years. Doesn't matter. A study last year found 65% of people use the same password across multiple accounts. When a website gets breached and dumps millions of passwords onto the dark web, attackers don't guess anything. They've got valid username-password pairs. They just try them everywhere else.
And they can test millions per hour using tools that cost them nothing.
Traditional defenses like rate limiting and CAPTCHA were built to stop one person sitting there manually typing passwords. They fall apart against botnets running from thousands of different IP addresses that blend right into normal traffic patterns.
We built defenses for an attack that doesn't happen anymore.
Credential Spraying: Slow and Steady Wins
Credential spraying works differently. Instead of hammering one account with lots of passwords, which triggers lockouts, attackers try one common password against thousands of accounts. Pick "Password123!" and test it against every employee in the company directory. No single account hits the lockout limit. No alarms go off. No one notices.
Microsoft said credential spraying attempts against its systems jumped 340% last year. It works because of built-in weaknesses we can't really fix without changing the whole model, weak password policies that people hate, delayed detection systems, and basic math. In any company with thousands of employees, someone is using a password from the top 100 most common list. Guaranteed.
Phishing: Still the Easiest Way In
Phishing got industrial too. Modern phishing kits can copy a real login page in real time, make it look perfect, and even pass authentication requests through to the actual service to beat two-factor authentication.
Someone gets an email that looks exactly like their work login page. They type in their password. The fake site grabs it and instantly sends it to the real site, passing any security code back to the victim in real time. By the time something feels off, the attacker's already inside.
What technical skill is needed to do this? Almost none. You can buy complete phishing kits for fifty bucks a month. That's it.
The Thing Nobody Says Out Loud About Password Requirements
Strict password policies don't make things more secure. They make people creative about getting around them.
Password fatigue is absolutely real. When companies force complex requirements—twelve characters, uppercase, lowercase, numbers, symbols, no dictionary words, change it every three months—people respond the same way every time:
- Write it on a sticky note by their keyboard
- Save it in their browser with no encryption
- Make patterns: "Summer2024!" becomes "Fall2024!" becomes "Winter2024!"
- Use the exact same complicated password for work and personal accounts because remembering twelve different versions is impossible
The harder you make the rules, the more inventive the workarounds get. And the workarounds are usually worse than what you were trying to prevent.
I've sat in meetings where security people quietly admit they know this happens. They just don't have better options if passwords are the starting point.
So you end up with perfect compliance on paper, policies enforced, complexity documented, and rotation schedules met, while actual security quietly falls apart because people are human and humans don't work the way policies assume they will.
This isn't a training issue. It's not about making users smarter. The design is broken. You can write all the policies you want. Won't fix it.
The Hidden Cost of Keeping Passwords Around
From a developer's perspective, maintaining passwords in 2026 feels like carrying debt that keeps getting more expensive.
What It Actually Takes to Store Passwords Securely Now
Storing passwords properly isn't simple anymore. Here's what you actually need:
Hashing algorithms that adapt as computers get faster (bcrypt, scrypt, Argon 2)
- Unique salt for every single password
- Checking passwords against breach databases like Have I Been Pwned
- Rate limiting that doesn't accidentally let attackers lock everyone out
- Password reset systems that don't create new security holes
- Logging that tracks attempts without exposing the actual passwords
- Staying compliant with regulations that keep changing
Every item on that list adds complexity and maintenance work. And even if you do all of it perfectly, the whole thing still depends on users picking strong, unique passwords.
Which they don't. Ever.
The Costs That Don't Show Up in Budgets
Password resets alone eat ridiculous amounts of time. Studies show 20-50% of helpdesk tickets are password-related. For a medium-sized company, that's hundreds of thousands a year in labor costs just managing something that doesn't even work very well.
Then add dealing with credential attacks, monitoring suspicious logins, and keeping compliance docs updated. The total cost is hard to justify when you step back and look at it honestly.
We're spending a lot of money maintaining something that keeps failing.
Passwordless Is Already Here: It's Not Some Future Thing
Passwordless authentication solutions aren't experimental. They're real standards that big organizations are already using because they decided passwords weren't worth defending anymore.
How Passkeys Actually Work
Passkeys use WebAuthn and FIDO2 standards. When you sign up somewhere, your device creates two keys: one private that stays on your device forever and one public that goes to the website.
When you log in, the website sends a challenge. Your device signs it with the private key. The website checks it with the public key. No password gets sent. No password exists to steal.
Here's the best part. Passkeys can't be phished. Even if someone makes a perfect fake of the login page, the passkey is tied to the real domain. It won't work on the fake site. The attack just fails automatically.
How Companies Are Actually Switching Over
This doesn't have to be some huge, scary migration. Companies are doing it in stages:
- Start hybrid: let people use passkeys if they want; keep passwords for now
- Go conditional: require passkeys for admin access and big transactions;keep passwords for lower-risk stuff
- Eventually go full passwordless: new users get passkeys only, old users get time to switch over
Google said last year that accounts with passkeys had 50% fewer successful takeovers compared to password accounts, even ones with SMS two-factor turned on.
Microsoft, Apple, and Google have all committed to supporting passkeys natively. The tech exists. The standards work. The only real barrier now is companies being willing to actually make the change.
We're Already Past the Point Where Passwords Made Sense
I've watched this play out for three years now with different companies.
The ones still relying on passwords are spending more and more of their security budget dealing with credential attacks after they happen. Finding the breach. Containing it. Investigating. Notifying customers. Filing regulatory reports. Everything's reactive. Everything's expensive. Everyone's tired.
The ones who switched to passwordless early spend that money differently, on actually preventing problems instead of just cleaning up after them.
The gap between those two groups keeps getting wider. And it shows up in ways beyond just security, customer trust, insurance costs, how much attention regulators pay you, and whether you can actually compete.
Passwords had a good run. Sixty years. They solved real problems back when those were the problems that mattered. But everything moved on. The attacks moved on. The technology moved on. The standards moved on.