The FIDO Alliance has upgraded its Metadata Service (MDS) to make it more user-friendly for vendors and customers alike. The MDS was originally set up to provide organizations with more information about different authentication solutions. Vendors can use it to upload metadata about their various offerings, and interested customers can then download that metadata to evaluate those solutions and see whether or not they will work as advertised.
The improved MDS comes with a better user interface that makes it easier to upload and publish metadata, and a simplified API to facilitate downloads. Updates are sent out on a daily basis instead of a monthly one, while the service itself uses cloud caching to make the data more readily available anywhere in the world. The new MDS also uses a new JSON data structure format that is both easier to read and more compatible with basic web development tools.
Finally, FIDO has integrated the MDS with the FIDO Certification program to give potential customers more assurances about the reliability of FIDO-certified solutions. The integration essentially guarantees that the metadata for those certified authenticators is accurate, with FIDO attesting to the validity of the information.
The metadata includes details about an authenticator’s capabilities, and about any security issues that the solution may have. FIDO is hoping that the service will be a valuable resource for organizations that want to adopt multi-factor authentication, and that it will help them choose the best option from the hundreds of authentication products that are currently on the market.
The Alliance noted that MFA helps guard against phishing and account takeover attempts, making it useful for businesses in regulated industries like healthcare and financial services. It is also important in the government sector, especially in the wake of a recent Joe Biden executive order that gives federal agencies 180 days to implement MFA protocols.
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