FIDO Alliance Aims to Replace Passwords and PINs
PayPal’s Michael Barrett says passwords and PINs are losing relevance, and should be replaced by stronger authentication protocols based on an open standard. Barrett is president of the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance, whose purpose is to revolutionize online authentication with an industry-backed, standards-based open protocol that offers more security, ease of use, and convenience. The FIDO Alliance protocol offers users a choice of authentication while handing control to providers who can make authentication user-transparent and limit fraud risks. When a FIDO Authenticator is tied to an online account, it sets up a relationship between the authenticator, the relying party, and the FIDO validation service. After establishing the relationship, the authenticator and the validation service will only share one-time passwords, while all browsers on a user’s system would have a FIDO plug-in cap that is able to identify available FIDO authenticators linked to the user’s system. “Our intention is to really obliterate within a certain number of years both passwords and PINs, including internally in enterprises,” Barrett says. “Starting this year you will see FIDO-enabled devices appearing in the market.”
From “PayPal Says It’s Time to Ditch Passwords and PINs”
CIO (05/09/13) Olavsrud, Thor