Yubico Promotes eIDAS Standards with National eID Program in Faroe Islands

Yubico is expanding its footprint in the European marketplace. The company is currently deploying YubiKeys for a number of national identity projects that are intended to meet the strong security standards that were introduced with the Electronic Identification, Authentication and Trust Services (eIDAS) regulation in 2014.

To that end, the YubiKey leverages FIDO2 technology to allow for the creation of secure digital signatures that are compliant with the latest eIDAS requirements. Those signatures can in turn help facilitate the delivery of a range of different eIDAS services throughout Europe, up to and including electronic IDs and national identity programs.

Yubico implied that several countries are currently considering such programs, although it specifically highlighted the National Digitalisation Programme that the Faroe Islands is planning to implement in 2020. The Programme will allow Faroese citizens to utilize YubiKey 5 devices as an official eID card to gain access to various government and financial services.

“Yubico’s YubiKey is supported on almost all major mobile and desktop platforms and embraced by top internet players, including browser suppliers,” said Janus Læarsson, the Chief IT Architect for Talgildu Føroya. “We see it as an added benefit to our citizens to offer an eID while at the same time offering an easy way to secure their online presence.”

The proposed eID scheme will meet the latest FIDO2 standards and offer high-level eIDAS assurance, while Yubico is teaming up with Nexus to deliver its portion of the solution.

Yubico has been a longtime supporter of FIDO2 and eIDAS protocols. The company released the YubiKey 5 Series back in 2018, and recently announced that it is partnering with RSA Security to release a FIDO2-enabled hardware device dubbed the RSA SecurID Access.

Yubico also raised the curtain on its first biometric YubiKey at the Microsoft Ignite event in November. The YubiKey Bio leverages on-device fingerprint recognition to improve the security of the standard YubiKey.