On July 16th, 2024, the FIDO Alliance held a seminar focused on the fit for FIDO authentication and device onboarding within the automotive industry. Co-hosted with Swissbit, the event had over 100 attendees who heard from various stakeholders on the need and opportunity for standards-based approaches to securing the automotive workforce and manufacturing process. Themes included how passkeys and FIDO-certified biometrics can help transform the future of in-vehicle experiences, especially with in-car payments, smart cars, and IoT.
FIDO Momentum in the Automotive Industry
Like just about every market sector, the automotive industry is plagued by risks and ramifications associated with decades of relying on passwords – and is also uniquely poised to improve the user experience by embracing passkeys for user authentication.
With smart cars having embedded technology to connect to digital experiences, there are several innovations primed for take-off in the automotive industry. With nearly 100 million vehicles will be making payments by 2026, up from just 2.3 million in 2021, passkeys will be crucial to simplify the in-vehicle user experience. At the same time, manufacturers have the opportunity to improve IoT and secure embedded devices to improve customer experiences on and off the road.
Manufacturing and Smart Car Case Studies
On the workforce front, the event featured a case study from MTRIX and considerations on how to deploy FIDO security keys to a manufacturer’s workforce – contemplating the many types and locations of workers for today’s global manufacturers. This case study reinforced the factors called out in a presentation by Infineon on the regulatory-driven push and pull with FIDO authentication.
VinCSS described how FIDO Device Onboard is being used today to secure the smart car ecosystem both at point of manufacturing as well as for after-market use cases.
Using Passkeys for In-Vehicle Payments
The final block of sessions looked more closely at our in-vehicle future – including an overview of current trends for in-vehicle payments. Visa and Starfish then presented a blueprint and demo respectively for a standards-based approach for in-vehicle payments before Qualcomm wrapped things up with their vision for a digital chassis as the foundation for a software-defined vehicle that contemplates the need for secure identity, payments and driver/passenger personalization.
Driving FIDO in the Automotive Industry – Next Steps
Interested in this seminar’s content? Find these presentations and more on the Munich Seminar event page.
The FIDO Alliance welcomes input from the public and the identity security community on FIDO’s future in the automotive industry. Comments are welcome via our contact us page. For in-person connections, we encourage identity security and authentication professionals to join us at our conference, Authenticate, where there will be several automotive and passkey related sessions, content, and peer networking. This year’s event, held Oct. 14-16th, 2024, will be held in sunny southern California at the La Costa Omni Resort in Carlsbad, CA.
