Apple has instilled new life into biometric authentication, specifically in handheld device, with its TouchID equipped iPhone 5S and the race to incorporate fingerprint sensors into smartphones, tablets has heated up with reports indicating that Android based smartphones will also feature such a technology as early as 2014.
The FIDO Alliance is looking to bring fingerprint recognition technology to Android powered smartphones soon. The alliance, a group of 48 members including the likes of Google, PayPal and Lenovo, intends to bring a TouchID rival to Android soon. In an interview with USA Today, Michael Barrett said that FIDO’s intention is to enable users to use mobile devices with easy “while keeping good security.”
“That’s explicitly what we want to build”, Barrett added.
FIDO is planning to get biometric solutions working on Android in about six months’ time. According to the report, Apple’s TouchID is not compliant with FIDO standards, but Barrett said that he was confident that Apple’s technology can be adapted to FIDO standards. He said that Apple may start using FIDO, but it is likely to happen couple of years down the line.
FIDO is also planning to bring out an open standard using which users can quickly and easily authenticate to services provided by different companies. Passwords are still a centrally-stored and controlled entity, which FIDO wants to do away with. According to the alliance the open standard will allow participating organizations to authenticate users using locally stored fingerprint information without having to store their authentication credentials on their servers
The FIDO alliance came into being this February, but hasn’t shown any major results yet.
