This week kicked off with the newest findBIOMETRICS webinar “The Password is Dead!”: a discussion with Michael Barrett, president of the FIDO Alliance, and Nok Nok Labs’ senior director of business development Jamie Cowper (filling in for CEO Phil Dunkelberger) on exactly what you would expect: a future of strong authentication.
As if to accent the presentation, the very next day brought the announcement that ValidSoft, a company Mobile ID World has reported on in the past for its invisible authentication offerings, has joined the FIDO Alliance. Michael Barrett lent comment to the Alliance’s newest member, saying, “The FIDO vision of universal strong authentication promises better security, enhanced privacy, more commerce and expansion of services throughout digital industries. ValidSoft’s contribution to our Alliance supports our industry goal to make user authentication easier and safer for all parties.”
Another member of FIDO that specializes in low-friction authentication solutions is AGNITiO, who just this week announced that it has rebranded, launching a new website and an spotlighting an emboldened focus on the mobile market. The company, whose voice biometrics engine powers a variety of industry solutions including the SESAMES Award winning “My voice is my password” technology from Oberthur, presented it’s new look and mission statement earlier in the week, following it up with the announcement that Voice iD will be bolstering Dictao banking solutions with passive biometric authentication factors.
All of this talk of voice biometrics on mobile devices is going a long way in proving what experts had been predicting for quite some time: that smartphones will be home to a wide range of strong authentication factors, including a variety of biometrics, that scale depending on context. For a while however it seemed that Apple’ push for a single factor had so captured the public’s imagination that one kind of authentication would serve as the central mobile identifier. The Touch ID launch in September and the subsequent flurry of fingerprint solutions took the spotlight for much of the fall, becoming almost synonymous with next generation smartphones.
Fingerprint Cards AB (FPC) has been at the front of the charge in mobile fingerprint biometrics, announces launch after launch of sensor-having phones, phablets and tablet PCs throughout autumn, but FPC technology isn’t limited to portable touchscreen devices. This week the Swedish manufacturer announced that its fingerprint swipe sensor is going to be included on SmartMetric’s newest smart card: the SmartMetric One Card digital wallet. As the name implies the One Card can store all of a user’s IDs, license information and credit and debits car accounts on a single unit, protected by biometrics that are authenticated on the card itself.
This is not the first of FPC’s sensors to make it on to a smart card, but it does act as a great reminder of the versatility found in the world of mobile ID: smartphones are wonderful devices, but with the future of strong authentication, the name of the game is convenience. If your identity can fit in your pocket and be proven at the swipe of a finger, then you can bet it will be sticking around.
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