NTT DOCOMO offers FIDO Certified devices and services

The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance announced that NTT DOCOMO intends to expand FIDO authentication for its country-wide mobile network with new FIDO Certified devices, and by extending FIDO authentication through DOCOMO ID to carrier billing services partners.

The move comes a few months after NTT DOCOMO became the first mobile networking operator (MNO) worldwide to enable FIDO authentication.

NTT DOCOMO will extend FIDO authentication to third-party mobile commerce partners and more customers throughout Japan by offering FIDO authentication in 10 devices, more NTT DOCOMO services, and partner services.

Since the company joined the FIDO Alliance board of directors, NTT DOCOMO has been contributing to development of FIDO standards and best practices.

Specifically, NTT DOCOMO oversees the establishing and chairing of the FIDO Deployment-at-Scale Working Group (D@SWG), intended to accelerate overall deployments of FIDO solutions by connecting online service providers with device manufacturers to share lessons learned, generate case studies, and establish industry best practices for deploying FIDO authentication at Internet scale.

NTT DOCOMO has expanded its FIDO UAF product portfolio by adding six new FIDO Certified smartphones for a total of 10 devices.

The company was the first to offer multimodal biometric options as part of its initial FIDO deployment. Now, NTT DOCOMO has also released biometric fingerprint (touch or swipe), or iris in its newest NTT DOCOMO branded FIDO UAF smartphones from OEM manufacturers.

The smartphones include Fujitsu’s arrows NX (F-02H) and arrows Fit (F-01H); Sharp’s AQUOS Zeta (SH-01H); and Sony Mobile Communications’s Zperia Z5 Premium (SO-03H), Zperia Z5 (SO-01H) and Zpreia Z5 Compact (SO-02H).

NTT DOCOMO also announced it will improve its carrier billing payment partners’ services by extending FIDO authentication to third-party operators.

By offering its ecosystem partners integration with its FIDO-enabled DOCOMO ID service, NTT DOCOMO is continuing to drive authentication standardization in order to create a password-free existence.

“By eliminating passwords with FIDO standards, we are able to deliver a superior end-user experience that includes enhanced security features; we are very excited to extend FIDO standards in new FIDO Certified devices as well as enabling more of our services,” said Seiji Maruyama, senior vice president and managing director of product department at NTT DOCOMO, INC. “After we became a FIDO Alliance board member in May, we began collaborating to drive and invigorate the FIDO ecosystem. Open FIDO standards facilitate expansion throughout the ecosystem for our partner OEMs to deliver many FIDO Certified devices to the marketplace.”

The FIDO Alliance will host two FIDO seminars where it will discuss the NTT DOCOMO case study and educate attendees on how to deploy FIDO authentication.

The first seminar will be held in Washington, D.C. on October 5 and registration is free.

The second seminar is scheduled to be held in Tokyo on November 20, with more details and registration information to be available soon at the FIDO Alliance Events site.

Article Topics

authentication  |  biometrics  |  FIDO Ready  |  telecom