The FIDO Alliance has provided an update on its security key support program in South Korea. The initiative was first announced back in April, with plans to distribute 300 free security keys to organizations that needed to protect remote workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Alliance has now handed out 156 of those proposed 300 keys, and argues that the program has been a success because it has helped raise awareness of FIDO authentication practices. More than 15 media outlets covered the campaign, and the majority (70 percent) of the 52 organizations that received keys represented new relationships for the Alliance.

The recipients came from a number of different industries, including healthcare, retail, and education. FIDO believes that as many as 25 percent could become business partners or relying parties for the Alliance. 

“It was an amazing experience not just because we have learned a lot from the market where we could not usually reach through conventional approaches, but also it only took less than a month from ideation to full execution,” explained Stephen Oh, the Co-Leader of the Deployment and Marketing Sub-Group of the FIDO Korea Working Group.

The keys themselves were distributed by the Sub-Group with in-kind sponsorship from primary vendors like TrustKey, AirCuve, and Octatco. TrustKey was spun off from eWBM, while AirCurve is the local partner of Yubico. 

In other news, the Korea Working Group has offered an update on the progress of its 2020 Hackathon. Registrations closed at the end of April, and 22 teams are now moving on to the Learn and Implement Phase after clearing a round of interviews at the beginning of March. Twenty-five teams were selected for interviews out of the more than 40 applications.

The FIDO Alliance will not be sharing any details about the teams until the evaluation phase begins in August. However, it did reveal that some of the applicants found out about the Hackathon through the security key distribution program.