Back to today’s briefing

Story perspectives

US Firms Accelerate Passkey Adoption, Yet Security Gaps Remain

5/8/2026

29 2 Full Breakdown

Summary

Tech Firms Adopt

On World Passkey Day, U.S. tech firms and users are shifting to passkeys.
Passkeys, which use public-key cryptography tied to a device, are known by 90% of consumers, used by 75%, and chosen for login by 49%.
Seventy-two percent of enterprises are deploying or piloting passkeys, yet only about 30% have made them primary, prompting Trevor Hilligoss to warn they do not stop cookie-hijacking and urge expirations and backup passwords.

Summary

Kaspersky Cracks

Kaspersky found an Nvidia RTX 5090 GPU cracks 60 % of MD5 passwords in an hour, with 48 % broken in 60 seconds.
Attackers can rent such GPUs from cloud services for a few dollars, enabling cheap large-scale password cracking.
Passwords still enable 22 % of breaches, 88 % of firms keep ghost accounts, only 47 % have MFA, the UK NCSC urges abandoning passwords, while India’s CERT-In promotes stronger passwords, MFA and a zero-trust model.

History

Historical Context

Founded in 1982, RSA Security later launched the SecurID hardware token, a hallmark of two-factor authentication. After CEO Ron Bidzos left in 1999, RSA moved from opposing to cooperating with the NSA, and its 2006 sale to EMC for $2.1 billion highlighted token-based security’s value. Today, NIST SP 800-63B and PCI DSS 4.0 require multi-factor tokens, pushing password-less, zero-trust adoption.

1 of 3

Tech Firms Adopt

On World Passkey Day, U.S. tech firms and users are shifting to passkeys.
Passkeys, which use public-key cryptography tied to a device, are known by 90% of consumers, used by 75%, and chosen for login by 49%.
Seventy-two percent of enterprises are deploying or piloting passkeys, yet only about 30% have made them primary, prompting Trevor Hilligoss to warn they do not stop cookie-hijacking and urge expirations and backup passwords.

1 / 3