FIDO Alliance
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Apple, Google and Microsoft commit to 'end-to-end' password-free sign-ins
Apple, Google and Microsoft are uniting to improve support for password-free sign-ins across your devices.
Safari will use Face ID and Touch ID for 'frictionless' web sign-ins
The next version of Safari will let you use Face ID or Touch ID to sign in to websites without entering your password.
The FIDO Alliance wants to bring password-less security to 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.
Paypal security chief wants more fingerprints, fewer passwords in future iPhones
Speaking at an Interop keynote last week, Paypal Chief Information Security Officer Michael Barrett hinted that PINs and passwords may be going away when it comes to account security on smartphones. According to a post on CIO's website, Barrett serves as the president of the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance, an industry group looking for ways to replace the 52-year-old password technology with stronger authentication methods. FIDO combines hardware, software and internet services to provide that higher level of authentication. That hardware can include a fingerprint scanner, a voice reader or something else. Barrett noted in his keynote that FIDO-enabled devices should begin appearing later this year, and he'd love to see Apple and other smartphone manufacturers leading the way to making FIDO mainstream: "It's widely rumored that a large technology provider in Cupertino, Calif., will come out with a phone later this year that has a fingerprint reader on it," he said. "There is going to be a fingerprint enabled phone on the market later this year. Not just one, multiple." Apple, of course, bought fingerprint security firm AuthenTec last year. Whether or not the company plans to incorporate AuthenTec's technology in a phone debuting this year is pure conjecture at this point, but comments by Barrett and other information security executives seem to indicate that FIDO technology will be part of standard smartphone gear sooner than we expect. [via MacRumors]
