BlackBerry joins FIDO Alliance

CEBU, Philippines - Despite speculations that the Ontario-based smartphone company is reportedly hoping to run a “fast auction process” which could result to selling itself off by November, Blackberry recently joined the Fast Identity Online (FIDO) Alliance and has been appointed to the Board of Directors in its intention to seek secure and universal authentication for its mobile platform and device users.

In the company’s latest press statement, BlackBerry is considered to be among the first mobile platform and mobile device suppliers to engage with the FIDO Alliance. This, as stated, is to equip its customers with easy-to-use strong authentication, allowing them to easily move from site to site securely without having to enter identifying information multiple times.

FIDO Alliance is an industry consortium revolutionizing online authentication with the first standards-based specifications.It aims to address the lack of interoperability amongstrong authentication technologies and remedy the problems users face with creating and remembering multiple usernames and passwords.

FIDO Alliance president Michael Barrett said that the addition of BlackBerry to the Alliance moves the mobile industry closer to universal strong authentication using the open FIDO specifications that embrace all use cases.

“We welcome BlackBerry to the FIDO Alliance board as one of the world’s leading mobile platforms and mobile device providers.We also prize BlackBerry among the Internet’s leading relying parties with the potential to allow millions of users to utilize open strong authentication,” he said.

Brian McBride who is the technical director for identity at BlackBerry said that the engagement of the smartphone company signals the commitment of BlackBerry to keep the Gold Standard in mobile security while providing a model for others to adopt and follow.

BlackBerry emphasized its value to security since the company’s inception which has been evident from its initial design and manufacturing to developing tamper resistant hardware and software for securing data at rest or in transit. It provides all the components to offer secure Enterprise Mobility Management (EMM) for BlackBerry, iOS and Android devices. 

“Offering safe, reliable access for our customers across the globe is inherent to everything BlackBerry does as an organization. We are both excited and proud to join the FIDO Alliance to help extend mobile security best practices and standards to the global community as the alliance strives to achieve universal secure authentication,” McBride stated.

BlackBerry, now as a FIDO Alliance Relying Partner, will be able to better serve users on BlackBerry.com, and those who use the BlackBerry Messenger, BlackBerry Protect and other BlackBerry services around the world. It also includes the developers submitting apps on the BlackBerry World storefront.

The FIDO protocol will support a full range of authentication technologies that include biometrics such as fingerprint scanners, voice and facial recognition, existing solutions and communications standards.

Apart from being designed to accommodate future innovation and protect existing investments, the FIDO protocol allows the interaction of technologies within a single infrastructure, enabling security options to be tailored to the distinct needs of each user and organization.

FIDO Alliance further encouraged more companies and organizations to join and become active members just like BlackBerry.

Meanwhile, it was last August that the rumored-struggling company announced that it had formed a special committee of board members to explore “strategic alternatives”.

It was also earlier this year that BlackBerry introduced all-new BlackBerry10 mobile operating system and its two new smartphone models named as Z10 and Q10.

BlackBerry kept mum on the said issue and has not released any formal statements commenting on the speculations.

In the same week that BlackBerry was cited in reports that it wants to sell itself off within the next months, Nokia, another former giant in the mobile phone industry, was finally taken over by Microsoft with its $7.2-billion deal. /JOB (FREEMAN)