FIDO Alliance Announces New Leadership Team for 2015

SOURCE: The FIDO Alliance

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA--(Marketwired - Jan 28, 2015) - The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance (https://www.fidoalliance.org/^[1]), an industry consortium launched in 2013^[2] to revolutionise online authentication with open standards for simpler, stronger authentication, today announced the result of their annual officer election, including new president Dustin Ingalls of Microsoft, and the appointment of the organization's first executive director, Brett McDowell.

In addition to appointing first-time officer Ingalls of Microsoft as their new President, Bill Smith of PayPal, Joe Pennisi of Lenovo, and Sampath Srinivas of Google were all re-elected to their 2014 positions of Secretary, Treasurer and Vice President, respectively; and the board appointed additional Vice Presidents Ramesh Kesanupalli, Nok Nok Labs and FIDO Alliance visionary, and Sami Nassar, NXP, expanding the leadership team to address the growing opportunities for FIDO standards adoption in 2015. The Board recognized outgoing President and former PayPal CISO Michael Barrett as Chairman Emeritus.

The year 2014 was an ambitious and successful one for the FIDO Alliance. Membership^[3] grew by more than a third, highlighted with additions to a board^[4] that now comprises global leaders in consumer devices and platforms, enterprise security, and authenticating high-value consumer transactions online. Met with widespread acclaim^[5], the FIDO Alliance published final 1.0 specifications, the world's first standards^[6] for interoperable strong authentication. Thirty-three FIDO Ready™^[7] implementations have passed interoperability testing, which offer many easy, secure ways to login and transact with sites, services, or cloud applications using FIDO authentication. Options range from biometrics to hardware tokens, embedded chips, and microSD adaptations, and FIDO U2F products from Google^[8], Yubico^[9], Plug-up^[10], EyeLock^[11] and other FIDO Alliance members^[12]. Google Chrome, the world's most popular web browser, now provides native support for FIDO authentication. Hundreds of millions of Samsung device users are prepared to use FIDO authentication in mass-scale payments^[13] applications that are deployed globally, including on China's largest payments^[14] platform, Alipay.

"The crescendo of activity in 2014 around credential theft & payment fraud has resulted in an ecosystem that is clamoring for a stronger solution that's easy to use," said FIDO Alliance President Dustin Ingalls. "The diversity and broad representation present in the FIDO Alliance today make it the frontrunner to deliver a broad industry solution to these issues."

"I see 2015 as the year when FIDO Alliance transitions from simply developing specifications and advocating awareness to an organization that is taking a proactive role in helping to shepherd the inevitable shift in the industry from single-factor password security to simpler, stronger authentication," according to Brett McDowell, Executive Director of the FIDO Alliance. "All the signs point to a dramatic increase in the adoption of biometrics and other innovations that will be enabled for secure, privacy-respecting interoperation through compliance to FIDO standards."

In 2015, the FIDO Alliance will continue to expand the FIDO standards for strong authentication with new versions that will enhance FIDO U2F with additional mobile and wireless capabilities, including extensions for BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) and NFC (Near Field Communications).

The FIDO Alliance participates in events worldwide^[15] to inform global audiences that better authentication -- more secure, private and easier-to-use than passwords -- has arrived and is ready to use now.

About The FIDO Alliance
The FIDO (Fast IDentity Online) Alliance, www.fidoalliance.org^[16], was formed in July 2012 to address the lack of interoperability among strong authentication^[17] technologies, and remedy the problems users face with creating and remembering multiple usernames and passwords. The FIDO Alliance is changing the nature of authentication by developing standards-based specifications for simpler, stronger authentication that define an open, scalable, interoperable set of mechanisms that reduce reliance on passwords. FIDO authentication is stronger, private, and easier to use when authenticating to online services.

The FIDO Alliance Board of Directors includes leading global organizations: Alibaba Holdings^[18] (NYSE: BABA^[19]); ARM Holdings^[20] plc (LSE: ARM) (NASDAQ: ARMH^[21]); Bank of America Corporation^[22] (NYSE: BAC^[23]); CrucialTec^[24] (KRX: 114120); Discover Financial Services^[25] (NYSE: DFS^[26]); Google^[27]; IdentityX^[28]; Lenovo^[29]; MasterCard^[30] (NYSE: MA); Microsoft^[31] (NASDAQ: MSFT^[32]); Nok Nok Labs, Inc.^[33]; NXP Semiconductors N.V.^[34] (NASDAQ: NXPI^[35]); Oberthur Technologies OT^[36]; PayPal^[37] (NASDAQ: EBAY^[38]); Qualcomm, Inc^[39]. (NASDAQ: QCOM^[40]); RSA®^[41]; Samsung Electronics, Ltd^[42] (KOSCOM: SECL); Synaptics^[43] (NASDAQ: SYNA^[44]); Visa Inc.^[45] (NYSE: V); Yubico^[46].