YubiKey Support Comes to the iPhone

Yubico has officially launched a new Software Development Kit for developers working on iOS apps, with the aim of delivering NEO functionality to iPhones and iPads.

This is basically the iPhone version of YubiKeys popular USB security keys. While the latter are designed to plug into the USB ports found on all kinds of PCs and laptops, allowing users to tap them in order to confirm that they really are working from a given device, YubiKey NEO allows mobile devices to pair with YubiKeys via Near-Field Communication.

YubiKey NEO functionality has been available for Android devices for years, but it only came to Apple’s mobile platform with the release of iOS 11. Yubico’s aim with its new SDK is to help iOS developers cut through the complexity of enabling YubiKey NEO support, helping them to quickly and easily bring it into their apps.

This has already been achieved for one of the biggest mobile apps, the LastPass password manager. LastPass has become one of the first apps to embrace YubiKeyNEO support on iOS – fittingly, given that it’s first and foremost an enhanced security app, designed to store unique and complex passwords within a central secured vault, which now can only be accessed on mobile using a YubiKey NEO device, for those users who prudently take advantage of the option. And given that iPhones already offer strong built-in biometric authentication, the addition of security key support allows for a particularly high level of authentication security.

Other iOS developers interested in integrating YubiKey NEO support are invited to sign up for the Yubico Developer Program, which offers webinars, workshops, guides, and more to help get the ball rolling.