The death of the password is nearly upon us, with the newly released information that the final FIDO specifications are set to be released very soon. The news came forth in an interview between ComputerWorld’s Warwick Ashford and Philip Dunkelberger, founder and CEO of Nok Nok Labs (a founding member of the FIDO Alliance).
After telling Computer Weekly that we can expect the final implementation “very soon,” Dunkelberger gave a soft deadline. Apparently, FIDO Ready product announcements are coming by the middle of next year.
The FIDO Alliance was founded in early 2013, and has since crusaded against the antiquated authentication method of the password. Immediately gaining traction and picking up major names on its board of directors including MasterCard, Visa, Samsung, Microsoft and a staggering number of strong authentication solutions providers, FIDO’s specifications cover two post-password identity verification methods: Universal Second Factor (U2F), and the completely password-less Universal Authentication Factor (UAF).
Google recently threw its weight behind the U2F draft specifications with the recently announced Security Key from Yubico. The peripheral device brings a remote “what you have” factor to secure operations in the Chrome browser.
The first to scale deployments of FIDO specs, however, involve mCommerce. In February, immediately after the announcement that the Samsung Galaxy S5 would ship with an embedded fingerprint sensor, founding FIDO member PayPal announced that the biometric device would be able to authenticate online payments. Since then, Alipay, the Chinese mobile wallet app, has also embraced the standard.
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