Can the FIDO Alliance Help Obsolete Username Password Authentication?

John Oltsik, NetworkWorld

What does this specification do? Simply stated, it provides standard protocols so that devices (like smart phones, tablets, PCs, IoT sensors, etc.) can easily participate in PKI infrastructure using just about any type of authentication technology as one of the factors. Don’t have a thumbprint reader on your phone? No problem. FIDO can find some other unique identifier (a TPM chip for example) and use this to create a key pair and act as the root of trust. Additionally, FIDO can create unique key pairs for different applications and services (i.e. Windows logon, Facebook, Paypal, etc.) and FIDO provides an abstraction layer so the actual private keys never leave the device and remain secure.