The FIDO Alliance wants to bring password-less security to IoT devices
The group wants to set security standards for IoT devices.
The FIDO Alliance's mission is to reduce our reliance on passwords, so it doesn't come as a surprise that it's working to remove password use from internet of things devices. In fact, it's hoping to strengthen IoT security altogether and has formed two groups to establish industry standards for IoT devices before they become much, much more commonplace. At the moment, a lot of smart products come with default passwords and have poor security in place, which could make them vulnerable to cyberattacks. We doubt anybody would want to worry about their toaster or their fridge getting hacked all the time.
The first group FIDO formed, called Identity Verification and Binding Working Group, will define criteria for remote ID verification and develop a certification program for manufacturers. FIDO previously determined that asking for biometric details and government-issued IDs when onboarding new accounts or recovering old ones "greatly improve the quality of identity assurance." It's possible that the ID verification criteria the group comes up with will require one or both of those.
The second group is called IoT Technical Working Group, and it's tasked with developing a comprehensive (and password-less, of course) authentication standard for IoT devices. It includes experts from Intel, Arm, Microsoft, Google and Amazon, and it's still recruiting more members from the industry. Seeing as 1 trillion devices are expected to be deployed by 2035, the standards will help ensure people's safety and privacy in the future.
