After officially releasing its final 1.0 draft specifications for strong online authentication last week, the FIDO Alliance, a consortium dedicated to replacing passwords with next generation security – has announced a substantial lineup to be showcased at the upcoming Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas this January.
Support for FIDO has grown rapidly and immensely over its two year existence and now we have reached a point from which everyday end-users can choose post-password security to protect their accounts and transactions. This is especially true now that Google’s Chrome browser supports the FIDO standards, allowing users to log in to Google accounts and sites with FIDO Ready solutions in the form of biometrics, hardware tokens, embedded chips or microSD adaptations.
So what can you expect from FIDO at CES 2015? According to an announcement made today on the Alliance’s website, FIDO Ready products will be demonstrated by AGNITiO, NXP Semiconductors, Sonavation and Yubico. The solutions will cover a wide range of modalities, highlighting the versatility of FIDO’s specifications. Voice biometrics, NFC tech and the first ever biometric U2F security key from Sonavation will all make their mark on this next CES.
AGNITiO will be showcasing the latest version of KIVOX Mobile, which offers an impressive array of voice biometric functions. Using the company’s Voice iD engine, KIVOX can perform fixed phrase, free phrase and natural speech authentication. The handsfree nature of KIVOX has some obvious uses in the world of mobile devices, but what’s more exciting in the insinuation made in FIDO’s announcement that it has Internet of Things applications too.
The presence of U2F devices is also notable. U2F, or Universal Second Factor, is a password-bolstering specification that relies on hardware tokens in addition to existing account security. A two step process, U2F requires a user enter a username and password before activating a physical USB device, effectively adding a “what you have” factor to login procedures.
Yubico’s YubiKey NEO, NEO-n and FIDO U2F Security Key will all be at CES and hold the title as the first implementations of the second factor standard. Sonavation, meanwhile has added a biometric factor to its own security key which will also be demonstrated.
Upon the publishing of the final draft specifications, FIDO president Michael Barrett declared a killing blow to passwords, calling the event “…an achievement that will define the point at which the old world order of passwords and PINs started to wither and die.” With this CES lineup and increasing support of the standards, that statement seems very accurate.
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