Everyone's pushing hardware keys for MFA, especially after the latest breach-of-the-week. PingID (with their own dongle) and Yubico (YubiKey) are the usual suspects. The vendor slides make both look effortless for "any user."
But we all know the reality in the trenches with non-technical staff. The glossy demos never show the finance manager who loses the key every other week, or the sales VP who can't tell a USB-C port from a headphone jack.
So, for those who've actually rolled one or both out to a general population:
* Which one caused fewer helpdesk tickets about "my key doesn't work" when the real problem was they were trying to plug it into the HDMI port?
* Did Ping's proprietary dongle end up being more of a lock-in headache than just using standard FIDO2 YubiKeys?
* What was the real per-user cost after you factored in replacements, shipping, and the extra 15 minutes of IT time per onboarding?
* For the non-tech users who *did* get it, which one felt more intuitive day-to-day? Was the PingID button any easier than the YubiKey touch sensor?
The marketing says both are "simple." I'm more interested in which one actually survives contact with a normal, busy, non-IT human being without blowing up your support budget.
Just my 2 cents
Trust but verify.