FIDO2 is a phishing proof and passwordless authentication protocol defined by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). ThinC-AUTH provides strong authentication for the web. In March 2019, W3C announced that WebAuthn is the official web standard for passwordless login.
Logging onto a website using your username and password is no longer the best certification method for various reasons. On the one hand, submitting personal user information is becoming increasingly cumbersome due to the ever-increasing number of services an average person uses. On the other hand, the security of log-in data is increasingly at risk due to cybercriminals becoming sneakier and more technologically advanced.
Targeted brute-force attacks or seemingly harmless email phishing attacks accumulate, and users often don’t even notice that their own login data has already been tapped. The FIDO2 security standard addresses this problem by enlisting the help of two-factor authentication that uses security keys (FIDO2 keys) and hardware tokens. Thanks to the integration of the W3C standard WebAuthn – this procedure not only allows encrypted and anonymous log-ins, but also completely password-free log-ins.
FIDO2 is the latest specification of the non-commercial FIDO Alliance (Fast IDentity Online), an open industry association with a focused mission: authentication standards to help reduce the world’s over-reliance on passwords. The FIDO Alliance was created with the aim of developing open and license-free standards for secure, worldwide authentication on the World Wide Web.
First came FIDO Universal Second Factor (FIDO U2F), then FIDO Universal Authentication Framework (FIDO UAF), meaning that FIDO2 is the third standard to emerge from the alliance’s work. At its core, FIDO2 consists of the Client to Authenticator Protocol (CTAP) and the W3C standard WebAuthn, which together enable authentication where users identify themselves with cryptographic authenticators (such as biometrics or PINs) or external authenticators (such as FIDO keys, wearables or mobile devices) to a trusted WebAuthn remote peer (also known as a FIDO2 server aka XSense IAM/IdP Server) that typically belongs to a website or web app.
FIDO2 eliminates the risks of standard user login process with ‘username and password’, which isn’t considered the most secure, as well as simple two-factor authentications (email, mobile app, SMS). FIDO2 prevents cyber criminals using typical attack patterns such as man-in-the-middle attacks and phishing from succeeding and taking over the user’s account.
Even if the log-in data is compromised, the FIDO2 login will only work with the respective hardware security key. Adding biometrics to the security key, such as ThinC-AUTH, protects from sharing the key with other users, and prevents from login with known or shared PIN. The fact that FIDO2 is an open standard makes it easier for software and hardware developers to implement the standard in their own products, so they are able to offer users this very secure login method.
The main goal of FIDO Alliance is to increasingly eliminate passwords on the web. In order to achieve this, the secure communication path between the client (browser) and the respective web services is first set up or registered in order to be permanently available for later logins. In this process, FIDO2 keys are generated and verified, which provide the basic encryption for the logon procedure.
The user registers with an online service and generates a new key pair on the device used - consisting of a private key and a public FIDO2 key.
While the private key is stored on the device and is only known on the client side, the public key is registered in the web service’s key database.
Subsequent authentications are now only possible by verification with a private key, which must always be unlocked by a user action. There are various options such as entering a PIN (vulnerable as it can shared), pressing a button (vulnerable as it can accessed by unauthorized people), or authenticating with biometrics to the security key (secure as ThinC-AUTH) itself.
The FIDO2 specification defines all components that are required for the modern authentication procedure. First and foremost is the repeatedly mentioned W3C standard WebAuthn, which allows online services to enable FIDO authentication via a standard Web API that is also implemented in various updated versions of web browsers and operating systems.
Applications that already support the standard declared in March 2019 include Windows, Android, and iOS (version 13 or higher) as well as the following browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Microsoft Edge, and Apple Safari (version 13 or higher). The second critical component is the Client to Authenticator Protocol (CTAP). This protocol enables the various FIDO2 tokens to interact with the browsers and also to act as authenticators. Both the browser used, and the desired hardware token must therefore be able to communicate via CTAP in order to use this security feature (including password-free login).
As enterprises procure large number of Biometric FIDO2 Security Keys, which are distributed to their Users & other stakeholders to ensure secure passwordless authentication, management of these Security Keys incur tedious burden on IT Admin teams.
Ensurity’s AMS (Asset Management System) solution efficiently manages the device management of ThinC-AUTH Biometric FIDO2 Security Keys. The AMS helps enterprises in managing the inventory of the Security Keys and assigning them with enterprise Users to fulfil their fingerprint enrolment process.
AMS provides controlled environment for the Users to enroll their fingerprints onto the ThinC-AUTH Security Keys. AMS securely stores the log reports for the audit purposes.
