Password Statistics 2026

It has risen to 31% in this year’s reporting dataset, while credential abuse—the previous leader—is down to 13%.

The use of compromised credentials was an initial access vector in 22% of the breaches reviewed in the 2025 DBIR.

While weak or absent credential entry fell from 47.1% in H1 to 27.2% in H2, software exploitation overtook credentials as the primary initial access vector for the first time.

Stolen credentials : 21% of cases involved actors leveraging stolen human and non-human identities for initial access.

one statistic stands out: more than 97% of identity attacks are password attacks.

In the first half of 2025 alone, identity-based attacks surged by 32%.

Last year, we observed a staggering 7,000 password attacks per second (more than double the rate from 2023).

Looking at remediation over time in third-party cloud exposure, only 23% of third-party organizations fully remediated missing or improperly secured multifactor authentication (MFA) on their cloud accounts, with 50% of all findings being resolved within a month.

For weak passwords and permission misconfigurations, the time to resolve 50% of all findings was much worse, reaching almost eight months.

Our data reveals that approximately 41% of successful human authentication attempts involve leaked credentials.

Our data reveals that 52% of all detected authentication requests contain leaked passwords found in our database of over 15 billion records, including the Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) leaked password dataset.

Bots are the driving force behind credential-stuffing attacks, the data indicates that 95% of login attempts involving leaked passwords are coming from bots, indicating that they are part of credential stuffing attacks.

In analyzing SSO provider logs, we found that the median daily percentage of credential stuffing accounted for 19% of all authentication attempts.

This number goes as high as 25% in enterprise-sized companies, while small businesses experience it at 12%.

In 2025, SpyCloud recaptured 5.3 billion credential pairs circulating in criminal underground sources.

This new data confirms that the average infostealer malware infection exposes 50 user credentials

SpyCloud’s recaptured datalake has grown to 65.7 billion distinct identity records – a 23% increase year over year.

SpyCloud recaptured 1.1 million password manager master passwords in 2025.

The Specops research team have launched the 2026 Breached Password Report, which contains analysis of over six billion malware stolen passwords.

Infostealer malware infection data shows that, in the median case, only 49% of a user’s passwords across different services were distinct from each other.

Analysis also showed password reuse rates of 65% among consumer accounts and 42% among corporate accounts

Password reuse is rampant, with 72% of Gen Z reusing passwords, contrasting with only 42% of Boomers – a significant generational disconnect.

59% of Gen Z also reuse existing passwords when updating an account with a company that has experienced a data breach, compared to just 23% of Boomers.

35% of Gen Z respondents revealed they never or rarely update passwords after a data breach at a company with which they have an account.

Even more revealing, 55% of respondents have abandoned an account or created a new one simply to avoid going through the password reset process, while 30% of Gen Z often or always forget passwords to important accounts.

Nearly half of Americans (45 percent) manage their passwords by saving them in an unencrypted digital note or writing them down on paper.

Roughly seven-in-ten (69%) say they feel overwhelmed by the amount of passwords they have to keep track of.

Some 41% of Americans say they always, almost always or often write down their passwords.

29 percent of adults had their identity or login credentials stolen in the past year alone.

The US stands out significantly, with 41% of consumers having confirmed a compromise or received a breach notification - ten percentage points above both Europe and APAC.

The share of Americans who say they use a password manager has risen from 20% in 2019 to 32% today.

About half of those ages 18 to 29 (49%) say they use a password manager.

Only 36 percent of U.S. adults—about 94 million people—currently use these security tools.

This year, 79 percent of password manager subscribers opted for cost-free apps, up dramatically from 63 percent in 2023.

Users with password managers were less likely to experience identity theft or credential theft in the past year compared to those without (17 percent vs. 32 percent).

Only 33% of Gen X use a password manager, trailing behind 39% of Millennials and 46% of Gen Z.

Passkeys have reached global scale with 5 billion passkeys now in active use.

Across both consumer and workforce environments , awareness is now near-universal and adoption has followed: 90% of consumers are familiar with passkeys, and 75% have enabled them on at least some accounts.

90% of consumers are familiar with passkeys, and 75% have enabled them on at least some accounts.

Because they’re not entering complex characters or one-time codes, users signing in with passkeys are three times more successful at getting into their account than password users (about 98% versus 32%).

Passkey authentications by Dashlane users have nearly doubled year over year, reaching 2.5 million per month.

Google leads the Power 20 at 28%, which means that even at the most passkey-successful major domain we measure, roughly seven in ten logins still don’t use passkeys.

Meanwhile, user adoption has exploded, with 40% of Dashlane users now storing at least one passkey—double the rate from just a year ago.

Easy to use: Fast, frictionless passkey logins can be completed up to eight times faster than signing in with a username, password and two-step verification code.

The implementation of phishing-resistant multifactor authentication (MFA) can stop over 99% of this type of attack even if the attacker has the correct username and password combination.

Overall, MFA adoption reached 70% of users as of January 2025, reflecting a mostly steady annual increase since 2020.

When we look at phishing-resistant authenticators (FastPass, WebAuthn, and Smart Card) combined, we see a 63% increase in the adoption rate, which rose from 8.6% to 14.0% of users in one year.

Usage of low-assurance SMS fell from 17.5% to 15.3%, and overall password usage decreased from 95.1% to 93.0% of users.

Our study found that in January 2025, 7% of users did not use a password for any sign-ins, validating that enterprise-scale password elimination is achievable today.

However, adoption of more advanced controls like two-factor authentication (47% businesses and 38% charities), a virtual private network for staff connecting remotely (36% businesses and 17% charities) and user monitoring (30% businesses and 31% charities) remain lower than other measures.

These uplifts were largely due to shifts among micro businesses towards incorporating more rules, such as only allowing access via company-owned devices (up from 58% in 2024/2025 to 64% in 2025/2026) and requiring two-factor authentication (up from 35% in 2024/2025 to 43% in 2025/2026).

In parallel, workforce deployment is approaching mainstream levels, with 68% of organizations deploying, piloting, or rolling out passkeys for employee authentication.

In workforce environments, even among organizations that have deployed passkeys, 57% still rely on phishable authentication methods for primary day-to-day sign-in.

The US has the highest rate of passkey-based primary sign-in (34%), but even there, more than half of organizations still authenticate the workforce primarily via passwords.

More than 80% of younger generations are at least somewhat likely to enable MFA even when it is not required, compared with only 51% of Boomers.