Dongpyo Hong, Global PD, Inc; Vice-Chair of FIDO Korea Working Group
Last month at the FIDO Seminar in San Francisco, I had the pleasure of speaking to attendees about the latest innovations and adoption trends for FIDO Authentication in Korea, and how Korea leads in the number of companies building FIDO Certified products. Looking forward, it is clear that Korea’s adoption of FIDO specifications will continue to expand and solidify in 2018 and beyond.
Added indicators of continued expansion in Korea can be found in the January 22nd proposal by Korea’s government to abolish the mandate to use public certificates as part of the regulatory reforms initiative driven by President Moon. Specifically, the most anticipated area of cybersecurity growth in Korea is on-device biometric authentication, and henceforth expanded deployment of the FIDO standard.
This builds upon Korea’s status as the country with the highest rate of FIDO adoption, evidenced by impressive statistics such as:
- 21 out of the 23 largest banks have adopted the FIDO solution, a 91% adoption rate
- 7 out of 8 credit companies (88% adoption rate) leverage FIDO authentication
- 22 out of 47 insurance and securities companies (47% adoption rate) have applied the FIDO solution to their business practices
These percentages (as independently researched by Global PD) are expected to grow along with a further push towards biometric authentication within the country.
With the introduction of FIDO specifications, and support from the FIDO Forum Korea and other organizations that have been sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Korea, the country has experienced steady adoption of the FIDO standard across multiple markets including: finance, telecommunications, portal/education, enterprise, public and government sectors. Previously, South Korea was at heightened risk due to a policy requiring any user of online financial services or payments to obtain a digital certificate tied specifically to the use of Internet Explorer and ActiveX controls.
FIDO Alliance last month announced the formation of the FIDO Korea Working Group with a goal to accelerate awareness and increase momentum for FIDO authentication in Korea. With executive representation from leading Korea-based companies such as Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., BC Card Co., Ltd. and Raonsecure comprising the working group’s leadership, deployment of FIDO standards is expected to resonate with even more companies within Korea in the coming year.
The FIDO Alliance vision and the resulting authentication platforms support Korea’s goal of providing a more secure cyber network. As the country takes note of the security advantages of on-device biometric authentication and the interoperable authentication of FIDO certified solutions, we can expect to see deployment of the FIDO standard by an even broader range of companies within Korea in 2018. With each application that adds support for the FIDO standard, users in the Korean market experience a simpler, more secure authentication platform and a greatly reduced risk of fraud.
