Those who attended or watched the recording of The Password is Dead! – a webinar featuring discussions of post-password security with Michael Barrett, president of the FIDO Alliance, and Jamie Cowper, senior director of business development at Nok Nok Labs – were treated to a fun tidbit of information: that early 2014 will see the launch of the first FIDO ready products.
At the time of the webinar, the term was simply an adjective, but today the consortium dedicated to open standards to universal strong authentication announced the FIDO Ready Certification program. At the time of this writing, products that comply with FIDO Ready demonstrate levels of interoperability in line with a working draft of FIDO specifications. Testing is performed by an independent organization, leveraging the Nok Nok Labs Multifactor Authentication Client Server.
Along with the announcement of the official certification program, the FIDO Alliance also announced exactly when the world can expect to see a demonstration of what FIDO Ready products are capable of. According to a press release distributed today, a number of Alliance members will be presenting new solutions that are certified under FIDO Ready at the 2014 Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2014), to be held in Las Vegas, January 7-10 2014.
An emphasis on interoperability seems to be at the heart of this coming mass demonstration, with members such as AGNITiO, GoTrust, FingerQ, Infineon, Nok Nok Labs, Synaptics (who acquired Validity Sensors in October) and Yubico. The product showcases will include everything from systems the use fingerprints, like a collaboration between FingerQ and Synaptics called PrivaQ Triange, to AGNITiO’s versatile Voice ID offering.
The FIDO Alliance has been gaining momentum all year since its official formation in February, snatching up members from across a broad selection of industries including Google, MasterCard, BlackBerry and recently even Microsoft and Discover Financial Services.
Michael Barrett comments on FIDO’s first eleven months: “In less than a year, FIDO Alliance specifications have enabled several of our members to produce some remarkable innovative authentication products. Participants at CES will benefit from hands-on experience of how open FIDO standards will work to enable truly novel strong authentication technologies. With FIDO specifications, users have a choice of devices and solutions that interoperate and make authentication easier to use, more secure and private. We congratulate our members on their timely work in delivering innovative authentication products to the marketplace and on display at CES.”
In the world of authentication, the kind of speed exemplified by the FIDO Alliance is a welcome change. Passwords and PINs have been failing the public they are supposed to protect for years. With the FIDO Alliance ready to show off what the post-password paradigm holds for end users and relying parties alike, 2014 will certainly start with a mobile ID bang.
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