FIDO Anticipates Growth in Korea with Regulatory Change

“…FIDO Korea Working Group Vice-Chair Dongpyo Hong noted that his working group launched with executive representation from some of Korea’s major firms, including Raonsecure and Samsung Electronics, and suggested that it’s poised to get even broader support in the year to come.”

Just a couple of months after launching its FIDO Korea Working Group, the FIDO Alliance is seeing strong adoption in the country.

The consortium has announced that 21 of South Korea’s 23 biggest banks have adopted its standards, as have seven of eight credit companies and 22 of 47 insurance and securities firms. Figures like that make Korea the country with the highest rate of FIDO adoption, and it looks like the trend will only become more pervasive going forward, with the national government having recently proposed to abolish requirements for the use of public certificates. That signals a pivot to on-device biometric authentication, where FIDO’s standards have a strong role to play.

In a post on the FIDO Alliance website, FIDO Korea Working Group Vice-Chair Dongpyo Hong noted that his working group launched with executive representation from some of Korea’s major firms, including Raonsecure and Samsung Electronics, and suggested that it’s poised to get even broader support in the year to come. “As the country takes note of the security advantages of on-device biometric authentication and the interoperable authentication of FIDO certified solutions,” he said, “we can expect to see deployment of the FIDO standard by an even broader range of companies within Korea in 2018.”

Dongpyo Hong’s comments come soon after the announcement that Amazon has joined FIDO’s Board of Directors, a development that suggests the organization’s profile will continue to rise not just in Korea, but globally, over the year to come.