UN ICT Agency Certifies FIDO Standards

The FIDO Alliance has further burnished the reputations of its UAF 1.1 and CTAP with important new certifications from the International Telecommunication Union’s Telecommunication Standardization Sector, or ITU-T.

The ITU is the United Nations’ ICT-focused agency, with ITU-T being its standardization arm. FIDO’s UAF 1.1 and CTAP specifications have now been accepted into the ‘ITU-T Recommendations’, which are established by ITU-T Study Group 17.

FIDO UAF 1.1 has become Recommendation ITU-T X.1277, a mobile authentication standard pertaining to biometrics and other post-password mechanisms. Meanwhile, CTAP, a component of the new FIDO2 standards concerning web authentication with biometrics and security keys, has become Recommendation ITU-T X.1278.

In a statement announcing the certifications, FIDO Alliance Executive Director Brett McDowell explained that they represent “arguably the highest bar in ICT standardization,” adding that the ITU-T’s approval “illustrates the maturity of FIDO authentication technology and complements our web standardization work with the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).”

ITU-T Study Group 17 Chairman Heung Youl Youm, meanwhile, highlighted how the certifications can help to further proliferate FIDO’s strong authentication standards. “These new ITU standards will provide a concrete basis for the two FIDO specifications to be adopted across the 193 ITU Member States,” he said.

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