Apple joins FIDO Alliance to help develop and promote authentication standards

Apple has joined the Fast Identity Online ( “FIDO”), and Apple has been added to the board’s membership list. Apple has joined forces with existing members of the alliance, including Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Samsung, with a common goal of securing online connections.

The FIDO Alliance was co-founded in 2012 by organizations such as Lenovo and Paypal. The Alliance is an open industry association whose mission is to develop and promote stronger authentication standards and help reduce the world’s over-reliance on passwords. The goal is to develop a Universal 2nd Factor (“U2F”) certification standard.

U2F is an open standard that uses specialized USB or NFC (near-field communication) devices to enhance and simplify two-factor authentication (“2FA”), based on similar security technologies used in smart cards. It was originally developed by Google and YubiKey and includes NXP contributions.

U2F security keys can be used as another two-step verification method in online services that support the U2F protocol, such as Google, Dropbox, and Facebook.

Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera browsers natively support U2F. In iOS 13.3, Apple’s Safari also supports compliance with FIDO2 of a physical security key.

Via: macg