FIDO Announces Biometrics Certification Program

 “As an organization that is driven by our members’ real-world business requirements, and already experienced at delivering globally scalable high-quality certification programs, the FIDO Alliance was the organization our members chose to fill this gap in the market.” – Brett McDowell, Executive Director, FIDO Alliance

The FIDO Alliance is launching its own certification program for biometric authentication technology.

The aptly named Biometric Component Certification Program will focus primarily on biometric subcomponents, ascertaining whether they meet certain ISO standards, ie. ISO/IEC 19795 and ISO/IEC 30107. It will also assess their capacity for Presentation Attack Detection, an increasingly important area as biometrics are more and more often used for authentication.

In announcing the certification program, the FIDO Alliance asserted that it would use “accredited independent labs” to perform its assessments. The organization did not name any labs in particular, but it may be worth noting that Denver-based iBeta launched its own Presentation Attack Detection program this past spring.

FIDO is already renowned for its certification programs for its Universal Second Factor (U2F) and Universal Authentication Framework (UAF) protocols, of course, and in recent years has established itself as a key standards body for authentication security products and services. With biometrics an increasingly critical component of authentication systems, FIDO’s branching into biometric subcomponents certification is a logical step forward.

As FIDO Alliance Executive Director Brett McDowell explained in a statement announcing the program, “With biometrics being a popular option for mobile and web applications implementing FIDO Authentication, there is a growing need for those service providers to appropriately assess the risk of fraud from lost or stolen devices.” McDowell added that while the law enforcement and border control markets have their own government-focused certification programs, so far no such programs have existed for the growing consumer market.

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September 6, 2018 – by Alex Perala