Andrew Shikiar, Sr. Director of Marketing, FIDO Alliance
“How does FIDO Authentication fit with Mobile Connect?” We’ve heard this question with growing frequency since this year’s Mobile World Congress, and it has also been a core topic of discussion at our FIDO seminars earlier this month in Paris and Barcelona. In order to fully answer that question, we are pleased to announce a new liaison partnership with GSMA, the organization representing mobile operators worldwide. Together, we will explore how FIDO Authentication and Mobile Connect fit together from both a technical and market perspective.
GSMA’s Mobile Connect provides a universal login solution that matches users to their mobile device, allowing them to log into websites and applications without usernames and passwords. The vision of Mobile Connect, according to GSMA, is “simple, secure and convenient access to online services via your mobile device, anywhere,” a vision that aligns with the FIDO Alliance mission of simpler, stronger authentication.
There are many ways in which FIDO Authentication complements Mobile Connect, one of the most prominent being the shared use case of leveraging mobile devices for passwordless authentication. Additionally, both organizations place great value on protecting sensitive user information — with FIDO not sharing any user authentication data and Mobile Connect only sharing personal information with explicit end-user permission.
The ecosystem of FIDO® Certified devices in market is large — we estimate that hundreds of millions of handsets have shipped that can support FIDO Authentication. This opens up the opportunity for Mobile Connect to leverage the FIDO ecosystem to expand the range of authentication options offered to Mobile Connect users, allowing them to use, for example, the built-in biometric authenticators on smartphones, tablets, and notebook PCs. In turn, this will expand the reach of the FIDO ecosystem, as Mobile Connect has already been launched by 52 operators in 29 markets.
We are looking forward to this liaison partnership, and an in-depth exploration of how FIDO Authentication and Mobile Connect combined can help users transact more safely and conveniently in our increasingly global and connected society.
