Kevin Surace, Chief Executive Officer at TokenCore, opens with the attack path he says is doing the most damage right now. A phishing email carries a PDF and no links, so it clears the filters. The domain is one character off from the real one, the site is pixel perfect because AI built both the page and the message, and the employee approves an auth prompt they were already expecting.
The code was real and the approval was real. Kevin Surace points out that auth apps and passkeys run over cellular and Wi-Fi, so the prompt has no way to know the request came from ten thousand miles away. Anything a person can read or hand over can be shared, and by his account an attacker needs about thirty seconds of trust to get it.
Passkeys moved the target rather than removing it. Kevin Surace counts 39 separate passkey attacks in the wild within two weeks of Microsoft telling customers to migrate, and points to Michael Grafnetter of SpecterOps, who presented passkey and Entra research at Black Hat. He walks through the FIDO2 counter that WebAuthn treats as optional so shared passkeys can move between devices.
What changes with TokenCore in the mix is where the proof sits. Kevin Surace describes signing into Entra in under two seconds, both passwordless and ID-less, over secure Bluetooth, with the device carrying no apps and no screen. Proximity holds it within three feet of the computer being logged into, the credential stays bound to the original domain, and fingerprints stay off the network.
Agents raise the same question in a new place. Kevin Surace describes a policy where an agent action above a million-dollar check needs a person to approve it, and notes that another agent, a hacked one, or a bad actor can clear that approval just as easily. A biometric gate is what tells you the CFO was actually in the room, which is a governance answer as much as a security one.
For CISOs, identity architects, and risk owners, the question worth asking is what an identity program looks like when the proof of a person becomes the control, and how much residual risk that removes from privileged access, financial approvals, and agent workflows.
This is a Brand Briefing. A Brand Briefing is an on-location conversation recorded on site at Black Hat USA 2026, putting a spotlight on the guest and their company and pairing it with the editorial reach of ITSPmagazine. Learn more: https://www.studioc60.com/performance/#briefing
GUEST
Kevin Surace, Chief Executive Officer at TokenCore
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ksurace/
RESOURCES
Black Hat USA 2026 event coverage: https://www.itspmagazine.com/black-hat-usa-2026-cybersecurity-event-coverage-in-las-vegas
Learn more about TokenCore: https://www.tokencore.com
TokenCore products: https://www.tokencore.com/products
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KEYWORDS
Kevin Surace, TokenCore, Sean Martin, brand briefing, brand story, brand marketing, marketing podcast, Black Hat USA 2026, biometric identity, identity assurance, passkey attacks, MFA relay attack, phishing resistant authentication, auth app compromise, FIDO2, WebAuthn, Microsoft Entra, passwordless authentication, agent authorization, privileged access
