Android FIDO2 (Fast IDentity Online) – now supported

Android FIDO2 Braking News – Web and app developers can now add FIDO strong authentication to their Android apps and websites through a simple API call.

FIDO Alliance Specialists (Fast IDentity Online) announced good news for Android users. All devices running Android 7.0 (Nougat) and higher, are now certified to work with FIDO2. Devices have already reached the appropriate update for Google Play Services.

In fact, it means that now users can use not only passwords (which experts have long called unsafe) to access services and applications. There are also alternative authentication methods such as biometrics (face recognition, fingerprints, iris, if the device supports it), PIN codes and graphic keys.

Google and FIDO representatives hope that the innovation will allow to better protect users. Their biometric data is much more difficult to fake and steal. In addition, the FIDO2 standard implies that the authentication process takes place locally. In this way, private data is not transmitted to applications and services that the user is trying to enter.

Android users have already been able to meet this functionality (mainly in banking applications), also this authentication standard is supported by popular browsers. But now FIDO2 can be used literally by any application and service. You just need to wait until the developers adopt the FIDO API for their projects.