BlackBerry joins the FIDO Alliance

BlackBerry has joined the FIDO Alliance and has been appointed to the group’s Board of Directors, the alliance announced today.

“”We welcome BlackBerry to the FIDO Alliance board as one of the world’s leading mobile platforms and mobile device providers. BlackBerry’s addition to the FIDO Alliance moves the mobile industry closer to universal strong authentication using the open FIDO specifications that embrace all use cases,” Michael Barrett, FIDO Alliance president said. “We also prize BlackBerry among the Internet’s leading relying parties, with the potential to allow millions of users to utilize open strong authentication.”

As we’ve reported previously, the FIDO protocol will support a full range of authentication technologies, including biometrics, as well as existing solutions and communications standards such as Trusted Platform Modules, NFP and embedded secure elements. The group says the open protocol is designed to be extensible and to accommodate future innovation, as well as to protect existing investments.

The FIDO Alliance is growing rapidly as an industry organization. Earlier this year, the alliance announced that in its first two months, membership doubled and it had added representation from Google, NXP and CrucialTec to its Board of Directors.

“BlackBerry is deeply committed to remaining the Gold Standard in mobile security while providing a model for others to adopt and follow,” Brian McBride, Technical Director for Identity at BlackBerry said. “Offering safe, reliable access for our customers across the globe is inherent to everything BlackBerry does as an organization. We are both excited and proud to join the FIDO Alliance to help extend mobile security best practices and standards to the global community as the alliance strives to achieve universal secure authentication.”

Article Topics

BlackBerry  |  FIDO Alliance  |  mobile  |  smartphone