Adam Powers, Technical Director, FIDO Alliance
“Certification matters.” That is one of the biggest takeaways for FIDO authentication in 2016, as we achieved 200% market growth of FIDO® Certified products. Since its launch, the FIDO Certified program has been a central component to achieving the FIDO Alliance vision for universal and interoperable strong authentication. Certification lets organizations test and validate their FIDO implementations to prove that their products truly conform to the FIDO specifications and work together.
The 200% growth of FIDO Certified products in the past year demonstrates that, globally, technology providers, service providers and enterprises not only understand the importance of certification when implementing and/or deploying FIDO authentication, but require it. It’s also important to note that it’s not just technology vendors that achieve FIDO certification; service providers that have deployed FIDO authentication understand too that certification matters. Take a look at the FIDO Certified list and you’ll see familiar names (Bank of America, eBay and Google for a few examples) that attest to this. And, it’s not just FIDO Alliance members that are becoming certified; non-member organizations can, and do, participate in the program.
Adding to this growth are the organizations with new FIDO Certified products announced today, including: certSIGN; EyeVerify; Feitian Technologies Co., Ltd.; i-Sprint Innovations Pte Ltd; Intel; IRISYS Co., Ltd.; Jilin University Information Technologies CO., LTD.; NBREDS; openit Inc.; SK Telecom and ubivelox.
This round of certifications also marks an important first: the first certification for FIDO-enabled biometric authentication on the desktop, from Intel. This comes after the announcement last fall that Intel, Lenovo, PayPal and Synaptics, all FIDO Alliance board members, were collaborating to bring FIDO authentication to Lenovo laptops. This certification is likely just the start of FIDO authentication on desktops, and I’m looking forward to seeing more progress on this front from other organizations throughout 2017.
What else to know about the FIDO Certified program in 2017: getting started is as easy as signing up for the test tools. We are also looking forward to upcoming announcements about several new certification programs currently under development to accommodate new specifications and maturing requirements for organizations implementing and deploying FIDO-based solutions — 2017 should be a very busy year for FIDO certification!
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