Apple has joined the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance, an open industry association that aims to strengthen identity verification assurance to support better account recovery, and automate secure device onboarding to remove password use from IoT.
First noticed by MacGeneration, Apple is joining existing members – which includes Amazon, PayPal, Facebook, Microsoft, and numerous others – in a common goal to secure online connections and support the adoption of the U2F authentication standard.
Universal 2nd Factor (U2F) is an open standard that strengthens and simplifies two-factor authentication (2FA) using specialized Universal Serial Bus (USB) or near-field communication (NFC) devices based on similar security technology found in smart cards. U2F security keys can be used as an additional method of two-step verification in online services that support the U2F protocol.
Popular browsers, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Opera, natively support U2F. As of iOS 13.3, Apple’s Safari browser supports FIDO2-compliant physical security keys like the Lightning-equipped YubiKey.
FIDO was founded in 2013 by a group including Lenovo and Paypal to address the lack of interoperability among strong authentication.