FIDO and Imprivata survey: frontline authentication friction costs 32,400 hours a year

The FIDO Alliance and Imprivata released "Frontline Friction: The State of Authentication for Frontline Workers" on October 19, a survey Sapio Research fielded in August 2026 among 700 IT and security decision-makers in the US, UK, France and Germany, 325 of them in healthcare. 37% say frontline workers hit an authentication problem in a typical month, losing about 2.5 hours each, which the report puts at 32,400 working hours a year for an organization of about 2,800 frontline staff. 95% have seen workarounds: staying logged in (40%), bypassing MFA or other controls (36%) and sharing credentials (33%). Only 40% are very confident they can attribute frontline access to the right person. 62% report unauthorized account-recovery or password-reset attempts, and 60% report social engineering against the service desk. 28% use passkeys or FIDO credentials, but only 15% without a password.

Why it matters

Shared kiosks and shared logins break the basic identity promise: you cannot say who did what. Friction causes the sharing, so stronger factors bolted onto slow logins make it worse. The 13-point gap between passkey use and passwordless use is the other finding to note: a passkey next to a password still leaves the password for attackers and help-desk resets.

Fix the reauthentication path first: fast tap or proximity sign-in on shared devices, short sessions that hand off cleanly, and passkeys or security keys bound to each person. Then retire the fallback password, and harden recovery, since that is where 62% already see attacks. Our help desk social engineering brief covers caller verification. Note that Imprivata sells frontline access products; the numbers are survey responses, not measured logs.

Source: FIDO Alliance