The Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance is celebrating its first year anniversary by publishing its first public review draft technology specifications.
Launched in February of 2013, FIDO has been rallying a diverse mass of players from a variety of industries that truly illustrates the need for stronger-than-password authentication solutions that don’t break the already over-taxed minds of all types of users. Bearing the post-password standard, the consortium has managed to assemble nearly 100 members. Google, MasterCard, Microsoft, Discover and even Netflix are counted among the impressive membership, which made headlines in regards to its marked growth in autumn of 2013.
“It is with pride that the FIDO Alliance releases the review draft specifications to the public today, before our first anniversary of starting the long overdue revolution in authentication,” commented FIDO president Michael Barrett, going on to congratulate the members on achieving the current draft.
“With today’s public release of the review draft specifications, we especially welcome and anticipate new types of members coming from various enterprises,” continued Barrett. “Furthermore, we encourage Relying Parties to begin testing their unique FIDO authentication needs with the commercial solutions already available from many FIDO member companies.”
In a recent webinar titled The Password Is Dead! – an exclusive findBIOMETRICS presentation – Barrett and Jamie Cowper, the senior director of business development at Nok Nok Labs, addressed this strong need for relying parties to embrace strong online authentication. They maintained the stance that the fraud reduction alone, by way of rendering cyber attacks unscalable (and therefore ineffective), strong authentication can save Relying Parties massive amounts of money.
Indeed, this message has already begun to sink in. Mike D. Kail, vice president of IT operations at Netflix comments on the media giant’s newly minted membership: “It is incumbent upon Enterprise IT to begin moving away from the world of basic username/password authentication, and we are excited to join the FIDO Alliance in shaping the future of strong authentication. We look forward to collaborating with various sectors and industry experts and contributing experience and guidance on best security and authentication practices for Enterprise IT.”
Products have already been developed to the current (and now public) Alliance specifications, having been certified as FIDO ready after successfully undergoing trusted third party testing on the Nok Nok Labs Multifactor Authentication Client Server. Just last week, FIDO announced its substantial lineup for the upcoming Mobile World Congress in Barcelona where a number of these solutions will be on display.
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