With the advancement of mobile technologies, everything is now a single touch away. Be it shopping, entertainment, health trackers, dating, work, or study; there is an app available for everything in a device that fits the palm of your hand. But it also comes with the cost of putting your highly secure and personal information at risk. Therefore, the app developers devised the system of a username and a password to protect user information. However, this system fails if someone hacks the login credentials. Moreover, you will need a new password for every app on your phone, which given the number of average apps on the phone, creates an inconvenience.
What is FIDO?
To overcome this problem, a non-profit organization by the name of FIDO Alliance introduced FIDO online security and authentication service, which stands for “fast identification online.” It is the combination of technology-agnostic security specifications that employs biometric information for user identification and strong security. In addition to this, it strives to minimize the risk of identity theft by setting authentication standards at the client and protocol layers.
FIDO Alliances came into being in February 2013, when PayPal wanted to upgrade its security protocol and wanted to incorporate the system of scanning the user’s fingerprint. Its members encompass almost all the top tech companies in the world, including Microsoft, Apple, master cards, Google, Samsung, and Dell, etc.
How does Fido work?
As previously mentioned, it uses biometric information such as fingerprint scanning, face recognition, or iris scanning for FIDO online identity verification. Because all these factors of privacy protection are unique to every user, thus making it almost impossible to hack. Instead of a database used for traditional password protection, the user’s device creates a new key pair while registering for an online service. The private key is stored in the device while the online service stores the public key. FIDO privacy protection service demands the user’s FIDO enabled device to confirm the excess to the private key via user-friendly gestures such as entering a pin, speaking into a microphone, or biometric authentication.
What are the advantages of FIDO?
The breakthrough technology for online security and data protection provided by the FIDO alliance has freed us of the traditional practices in the following ways:
- Clients no longer need to navigate through the maze of login information such as user ID and password separately for every online platform.
- It also eliminates the risk of someone stealing user information by gaining access to the password.
- It verifies and stores the information locally on the device in contrast to the traditional method of storing highly sensitive information on the cloud.
- Making online payments highly secure and convenient through biometric verification rather than bank information or OTP (one-time-password).
- Saving developers, the trouble of designing multiple secure logins for users with different operating systems.
- The highly proficient 3D face recognition technology allows for accurate authentication.
- Implements both embedded verification factors such as biometrics or secondary factors, including FIDO password security, Near Field Communication (NFC) tap, or USB security token.
Helping companies with the integration and protection of their client’s data. It does not allow companies and online social or e-commerce platforms to access user’s data and use it to their advantage due to the local verification on the device.
