WASHINGTON DC – The Fast IDentity Online (FIDO) Alliance has announced the creation of a “Government Membership Class” that will welcome governments as members of the industry consortium's online authentication protocol.Speaking at the connect:ID event in Washington, Brett McDowell, Executive Director of the FIDO Alliance, revealed the creation of the government class after giving a “100 day report” on how far the alliance has progress towards widespread adoption.”Governments are already around the world are looking at the Fido Alliance,” he said, adding that the new class “reflects our increased focus on governments as part of a commitment to ensure standards don't fragment”.Speaking of “the authentication revolution”, he said this new government membership class will enable public and private sector collaboration on to address the “tremendous issue” of identity authentication.Highlighting that FIDO standards are being implemented by Windows, Samsung and Qualcomm among other major firms, he said: “We expect clients in the billions, not the millions”.FIDO was formed in July 2012 to address the lack of interoperability among strong authentication technologies, and remedy the problems users face with creating and remembering multiple usernames and passwords.On Tuesday, global authentication infrastructure and digital property security company HOYOS Labs announced that it had joined the alliance.”The FIDO Alliance welcomes HOYOS Labs and thanks them for their commitment to strong authentication that is interoperable, secure, and easy to use,” said Brett McDowell, FIDO Alliance executive director. “Every organization that joins in the commitment to the FIDO ecosystem reinforces the value of a collaborative standards development. Hoyos Labs brings notable capability in biometric authentication and standards development as illustrated by their leadership in the development of the IEEE Biometric Open Protocol Standard (BOPS).” On Monday, FIDO Alliance members MedImpact Healthcare Systems and Nok Nok Labs announced in other news today that MedImpact's Physician Access(R) Portal will deploy FIDO authentication using Nok Nok Labs' S3 Authentication Suite to enable authorized healthcare providers to login with a supported fingerprint reader.
FIDO launches govt membership class at connect:ID
