Latest / Identity at the Center / #384 - The FIDO Alliance's Next Frontier: Digital Credentials and Wallets

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#384 - The FIDO Alliance's Next Frontier: Digital Credentials and Wallets · Identity at the Center

• 0:04
  This is identity at the center. Welcome to the Identity of the
• 0:11
  Center podcast. I'm Jeff, and that's Jim.
• 0:12
  Hey, Jim. Hey, Jeff, how are you?
• 0:14
  Not so bad yourself. Great.
• 0:16
  Look, we're here at Authenticate 2025.
• 0:19
  We'll give it away. Listen, sometimes a little slow
• 0:24
  in the uptake, but I think things are starting to come
• 0:26
  together for me, right? We're major themes at the
• 0:30
  conference are things like, hey, the attacks are still the things
• 0:35
  they've been phishing, social engineering, things like that to
• 0:41
  get your password right now, how do we solve that?
• 0:44
  I think the answer has been pass keys, but it continues to evolve
• 0:49
  to now include identity verification.
• 0:52
  So you need this technology to solve this non-technical way
• 0:59
  that the hackers are working. At the same time, there's also a
• 1:02
  theme where AI is playing a role not only for the good guys, but
• 1:07
  for the bad guys as well. So I think there's this AI arms
• 1:11
  race going on. I don't know.
• 1:13
  All these things are like, This is why you come to conferences,
• 1:15
  right? It's like there's the theme,
• 1:18
  there's information, you sit there and then that ticket for
• 1:21
  some point, at some point for everybody.
• 1:23
  It's just like, yeah, that aha moments.
• 1:25
  Like I get it. I think I get it.
• 1:28
  You think you're getting it? I think I'm getting it OK.
• 1:30
  So identity verification I would say is huge, but I don't think
• 1:33
  it's just a technology because what is identity verification?
• 1:36
  It's verification of typically at least in most of these
• 1:40
  scenarios, a document and what is that document?
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  Something government issue, right?
• 1:45
  Something that is or maybe financial institution or
• 1:47
  education. So I think there is an
• 1:49
  opportunity for partnership here between a whole bunch of
• 1:52
  different entities to try and make this better for people.
• 1:55
  And I think that's what we're seeing in a great confidence.
• 1:57
  Well, there's a lot of attendees from a lot of different
• 2:00
  industries and verticals and technologies.
• 2:02
  And but it's not just technology vendors, it's also banks,
• 2:06
  education, I think Healthcare is here, you know, higher Ed I.
• 2:10
  Don't know if there's. Government here, we can ask our
• 2:11
  guests of that, but I think all those need to come together to
• 2:14
  really make this something that actually takes off and really
• 2:18
  flies. Yeah, there's a lot of
• 2:19
  practitioners here, so we can see the the progress is
• 2:23
  happening already, but more and more organizations are drinking
• 2:27
  the kool-aid and saying, all right, we need to do this as
• 2:29
  well. You know, when I think about the
• 2:31
  identity identity verification, I think where it hits home for
• 2:35
  me is we've talked a lot in the past about this unhappy fast,
• 2:39
  right? So that most of the hacks don't
• 2:41
  go through the front door. It comes down to the unlocking
• 2:46
  of a forgotten or a lost pass key for in this example, what if
• 2:50
  you could go back to a verified identity?
• 2:54
  You could do identity verification to unlock your
• 2:57
  passkey. Now that's horrible, yes.
• 3:01
  So I'm a fan of passkey, so I've got every time I see it, I set
• 3:03
  it up. So why don't we just, like, get
• 3:05
  into it with the man, the myth, the legend himself, Andrew Shiki
• 3:08
  are sitting across the table from us.
• 3:10
  Yeah. Executive director, executive
• 3:12
  director and CEO. I, I, I feel like I've been
• 3:15
  butchering your title for a long time because this you've been on
• 3:18
  as long as you. Have it you?
• 3:18
  Can call me whatever you want 10 Times Now like. 10 times I'm
• 3:21
  really here just to pad my league.
• 3:22
  And and you are doing a fine job on my I, I was talking to Jim
• 3:26
  yesterday during your keynote and say, all right, we got to
• 3:28
  wait, do something for and go, we go.
• 3:30
  On this is play, I appreciate this.
• 3:33
  If I keep having my lead, I don't know if I'm like the Cal
• 3:36
  Ripken of Inac or LeBron. I'm near as athletic or, you
• 3:42
  know, as strong as you're those guys.
• 3:43
  But I'm I, I take pride in this, this record and I do intend to
• 3:47
  keep it. Well, it's definitely a career
• 3:49
  highlight as far as I'm. Concerned.
• 3:51
  There's that. It is.
• 3:53
  Why don't we start with where we're at, right.
• 3:55
  The authenticate this 2021, one of my favorites of the year and
• 4:01
  it's been a great conference so far.
• 4:02
  But I'm curious before we get to that, like you, you I well,
• 4:06
  let's let's get into that as well.
• 4:07
  But yeah, your keynote yesterday.
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  Yeah, it was it was a little bit of kind of making everything.
• 4:10
  It was like, all right, here's where we've been and then here's
• 4:13
  where we're going. Yeah, we start with kind of I.
• 4:15
  Tried to have a narrative, yeah. Right, right.
• 4:16
  That's like those are summary, right?
• 4:18
  Well, first. I mean, let's talk about the
• 4:19
  elephant in the room, I answered to her.
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  Yes, I. Got AI, got a good.
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  Chuckle up, kid. Yeah.
• 4:25
  So that was. The and we're using Max, so I've
• 4:28
  been told you're not a massive. I mean, it's all, it's all
• 4:30
  there. So I'm open minded and changing,
• 4:32
  evolving through the years. Yeah.
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  So it's great to have an opportunity to kind of help set
• 4:37
  up the the vision for we're heading as an alliance for the
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  next, you know, next year or so. I talked about where we're
• 4:42
  coming or what we've done and where we're coming from and
• 4:45
  where we're going. So the first message was around
• 4:48
  Passkey in progress with Passkey's.
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  The fact of the matter is, I mean, Jeff, I love what you
• 4:53
  said. Like when you see a pass key,
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  you, you, you enroll, you use it, you love them.
• 4:56
  And I do too. And I, I mentioned I still get a
• 4:59
  thrill every time I see like the pass key, like signing, like I
• 5:02
  love it. And I love the fact that when I
• 5:03
  meet random people, like on the golf course or something, that's
• 5:05
  what I do. I can actually say, ever use a
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  pass key? Like, yeah, of course I have.
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  And then that's what I do, you know.
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  So is there something like so tangible about it?
• 5:13
  And the progress is so real that it, that it's fantastic.
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  So the past couple years we've got these counting statistics
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  like, well, we estimate, you know, 4 billion in total
• 5:22
  accounts can use pass keys and the 7 billion and the 10 billion
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  and it says, you know, we can't do that anymore because the the
• 5:28
  rollouts are so grown and we know the big brands are doing
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  this. But there's no point, you know,
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  quantifying the total, you know, number of accounts that could
• 5:34
  use it. What I did share is that we
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  estimate over 3 billion actual pass keys are being used to
• 5:41
  secure accounts. That's a big 3 billion in three
• 5:45
  years, less than three years. That's fantastic progress.
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  OK, so we're really happy with that progress.
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  But we also realized that like our job's far from done like I
• 5:55
  might firmly believe that, you know, passkeys are inevitable,
• 5:58
  right for consumer sign in. We will look back at passwords
• 6:01
  as a thing as a relic, right as as a as a Rotary phone.
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  It'll take a while to get there. We want to make sure that we
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  stay on that path to inevitability.
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  And so we have work to do That's what I've talked about things we
• 6:11
  need to improve on. One is on US improvements.
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  I talked about making sure that, you know, passkeys are fully
• 6:18
  capable and effective in the enterprise for workforce and
• 6:21
  these are things we'll work on. And the last thing I talked
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  about was a need for practitioners to really
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  contemplate the broader security picture, not just for signing,
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  which is where you know, passes are closing the front door to
• 6:30
  attackers, but also they're removing knowledge based
• 6:34
  credentials for recovery. All right.
• 6:36
  So if you if you have, there's a reason why a lot of companies
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  keep passwords around with pass uses.
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  You know, it's very complex to get rid of them all together,
• 6:44
  but you're putting them further and further in the corner,
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  further and further in the background is what we need to do
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  to lead their ultimate demise. Because as long as they're like
• 6:51
  readily accessible for recovery, there is a back door that's open
• 6:55
  to attackers, right? So that's another imperative we
• 6:57
  have for 2026. So we're going to push on all
• 6:59
  those things as we look to, you know, see more and more
• 7:02
  adoption, better adoption, better deployments that with
• 7:05
  passkeys in the market. I find interesting that you
• 7:07
  mentioned the user experience for passkeys.
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  I feel like it's already pretty good.
• 7:12
  Yeah. And you bought and you you've
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  spent a lot of time and I've ever building out the Fido
• 7:16
  standards for the user experience and you have a whole
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  bunch of documentation. Yeah.
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  What is? So when you say make it better
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  like what do you mean? Well, so I mean it's, it depends
• 7:25
  on your pass key experience, but the fact of the matter is that
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  every pass key experience needs to be an excellent experience,
• 7:30
  full stop. And often times you don't sign
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  in through the front door, right?
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  Not everyone enters a website through the front.
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  There's a lot of adjacencies where you enter, say an Amazon
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  or a PayPal or some of these flows are not always for the
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  front door. They come in different ways.
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  There's a lot of things to contemplate on how someone comes
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  to sign it. There's also surprisingly large
• 7:49
  amount of combinations of browsers and operating systems
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  and devices where there's still some inconsistencies.
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  There's some UX flows that are inconsistent with security keys
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  and things like that. So like we're aware of these and
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  it's a, you know, top priority is to identify them, figure out
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  how to solve them and, and to solve them.
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  And I, I appreciate the fact that you think it's a good
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  experience and you know that we've done good work on this,
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  but there's always, you know, always work to be done.
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  Yeah, that's user experience to me is a lot about ubiquity and
• 8:18
  consistency. I like as you go from place to
• 8:20
  place pass keys everywhere, but if they do it differently then
• 8:24
  that's going to automatically confuse people.
• 8:27
  Yeah, choosers, right. So then the fact of the matter
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  is you can enroll multiple pass keys for a service.
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  And I often do this. All right, so I live a very
• 8:34
  heterogeneous life. I'll be on honorable passkey on
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  my iPhone. I'll do one on my windows, you
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  know, for Windows Hello, and I'll do one for my third party
• 8:41
  credential manager. And sometimes, you know, the the
• 8:44
  site doesn't know what to present it with.
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  All right, so there's things we can, you know, improve on that.
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  And I think again, it's all attainable.
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  And I think it's always important to bear in mind, we've
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  been at this for only a couple of years and we're seeing great
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  progress. And and these are, you know what
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  I'll call lower case G, lower case P, growing things, all
• 9:02
  right, feel really good about the progress, but there's always
• 9:04
  work to be done you. Just need a better way theme
• 9:06
  music right for the wrong bands? So we talked about, we talked
• 9:10
  about progress in that front, but the other question we get,
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  so not just counting statistics, but qualitative statistics.
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  So we introduced the past the index you mentioned that this is
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  in response to really a desire for benchmarks and I talked to
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  companies a lot who are deploying and they might be
• 9:26
  early in the rollout like hey Andrew, look we have a you know
• 9:28
  say 35% enrolling rate. Is that good?
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  You know, our, we've cut our signings, you know, time by, you
• 9:34
  know, 75%. Is that good?
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  You know, I'm not making those numbers up, but like, how do you
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  quantify these things, right? It's kind of like a stick in the
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  space. If there's no, you know no
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  context around it, how do you know how you're doing?
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  It feels better, but yeah. You know, but the fuel is
• 9:47
  important, but you know, quantitative data is even
• 9:51
  better, right. So we're starting to be one
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  start providing benchmarks in the industry.
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  So we, we launched a passkey in this, which is an initiative
• 9:59
  comprised of Fido member relying parties, you know, major service
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  providers who have had rollouts in market for a bit.
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  And it's only, it's a small in. So it's only 9 companies
• 10:09
  contributed to this, but we took their, an average of their
• 10:12
  aggregate data, right? So nothing's depended, you know,
• 10:14
  directly to a company, but you know, each company's average
• 10:17
  signed a success rate and time to sign in and a number of
• 10:20
  metrics. We boiled that down into, you
• 10:23
  know, some benchmarks that people can be aware of and shoot
• 10:27
  for. All right.
• 10:28
  And so this is our our first step of this initiative and we
• 10:31
  intend to, you know, let this grow over time, both as a
• 10:34
  service to the industry to let people know what they should
• 10:37
  shoot for, but also as a benefits of members, right?
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  So I think that generally, you know, members who contribute
• 10:43
  data to this can get data out of it.
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  There's a lot of data that we held back from publishing.
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  So we want to make sure that you know, our our community at
• 10:51
  large. We're also our membership
• 10:52
  community has what they need to be successful, but they're past
• 10:55
  year olds. Yeah, that's really cool.
• 10:57
  And he's talked about the passkey index this week.
• 11:00
  We're here at the conference authenticate 2025.
• 11:03
  Tell us about it. How's it going so?
• 11:05
  Far I've been thrilled, you know, so we have more people
• 11:08
  than ever. I think we have around 750 on
• 11:11
  site maybe which is I think we're around 6:50 last year.
• 11:14
  So you know, nice growth and number of attendees.
• 11:18
  We have a lot of people attending remotely as well.
• 11:20
  We're one of the few conferences that still offer a fully remote
• 11:23
  attendee Which. Is great, fully support that.
• 11:25
  Which is great. So hey, look, if you just want
• 11:26
  to get the content, you know, attend remotely and if you can't
• 11:29
  travel, attend remotely also, you can get the content.
• 11:32
  We archive all the content, make it available first to people who
• 11:35
  do register and pay. So, you know, we're very
• 11:38
  cognizant of that as well. But the people on site get the
• 11:41
  whole benefit of being part of the community.
• 11:43
  And it sounds like such a cliche and kind of cheesy, but there is
• 11:47
  something pretty special here. And you mentioned this before,
• 11:49
  like there is a real sense of community here and people are
• 11:51
  here to help each other. And like, if you are interested
• 11:53
  in authentication and pass keys, like we're not going to find
• 11:57
  more capable, smarter people that are going to find here in
• 12:00
  our halls. And the content is fantastic
• 12:04
  with the hallway con is always a highlight, right?
• 12:06
  Seeing people connecting, you know, seeing someone who gets to
• 12:08
  talk about their deployment, spend like half an hour talking
• 12:11
  to people, have questions about it.
• 12:12
  You know, there's this real sense of goodwill and, and, and,
• 12:16
  you know, urgency to help each other be successful that really
• 12:18
  permeates, you know, the whole event here.
• 12:20
  So I think it's been a good event and numbers a couple of
• 12:24
  their data points. I think the, and Jimmy mentioned
• 12:26
  this, there's a bigger practitioner audience here than
• 12:29
  years past. And we saw this kind of
• 12:31
  anecdotally as the registrations came in, but I'm hearing it from
• 12:33
  our vendor hall that they're having, you know, more, you
• 12:36
  know, interesting conversations with people who are further
• 12:39
  along their deployment, their their purchasing journey, very,
• 12:43
  you know, have very poignant questions about how to roll out,
• 12:45
  you know, Fido infrastructure. So you know, more of a
• 12:48
  practitioner audience. And generally, you know,
• 12:49
  conversations has gotten more and more up level while also
• 12:53
  leaving room for new attendees. So I think we have around 45%
• 12:56
  new attendees this year, right? That doesn't mean they're new to
• 12:59
  pass keys means they're new attendees.
• 13:00
  But you know, people have all skill sets who are coming here
• 13:02
  to learn to advance their deployments and then move
• 13:04
  forward as well. So been really happy on that
• 13:07
  front with the show so far. Yeah, I wrote the practitioners.
• 13:10
  That's the one thing I'd say I felt that is the most different
• 13:15
  from past years. Yeah, like a.
• 13:16
  Whole bunch of people who are new to the conference.
• 13:21
  In the beginning of the show, I kind of tried to think out loud
• 13:25
  about what I'm kind of holding all these pieces together to
• 13:30
  paint the picture of what authenticates all about how
• 13:33
  close did I come? What would you change?
• 13:38
  But I think you hit it on the head.
• 13:39
  I mean, so it's, it's about, you know, well, the name of the show
• 13:42
  is authenticate. So it's about authentication.
• 13:45
  I mean, it's at its core, it's about authentication.
• 13:47
  So I want to talk about what we're doing next, next.
• 13:50
  So it's a place to learn about all things authentication with a
• 13:52
  focus on the Fido approach. I think that's our our mission
• 13:55
  statement. And so no matter where you are
• 13:58
  in your pass key journey, your authentication journey, you're
• 14:00
  going to learn something here, right?
• 14:01
  You're going to learn something by listening to practitioners
• 14:04
  give case studies. We're going to learn about
• 14:06
  different use cases. We're going to learn about
• 14:07
  futures. You're going to learn about
• 14:09
  adjacencies, you're going to learn about authorization and
• 14:12
  new standards and payments and agentic AI and all these things
• 14:15
  that are, you know, you need to authenticate first to sign into
• 14:18
  things to take advantage of this.
• 14:20
  But these are all the things we're covering.
• 14:21
  You know, one thing we've changed through the years and
• 14:27
  some of the feedback we got last year is like, OK, I get it,
• 14:29
  pass. These are great, but I don't
• 14:30
  need case study after case study saying like passkeys are
• 14:33
  amazing. So we actually got more
• 14:34
  selective. It's not just like a, a
• 14:35
  cheerleading session. We turned down some amazing case
• 14:38
  studies that would have been fantastic.
• 14:40
  But like we can only do so much of like I use passkeys, I save
• 14:43
  money as you know. So there's only so much that we
• 14:45
  could do. So we try to get sharper with
• 14:46
  some of the angles looking up. People are coming back a second
• 14:49
  time talking about what's happened, you know, on stage 2
• 14:51
  of their deployment. So you know, we've evolved the
• 14:54
  kind of message we have around this as our audience has matured
• 14:57
  also. And then the other key theme
• 15:00
  we're seeing here are the adjacencies.
• 15:02
  So part of my keynote that you mentioned is Jeff, I talked
• 15:05
  about like where we've come from and where we're heading.
• 15:07
  I guess kind of the headline here is that we are, you know,
• 15:10
  intentionally kind of broadening our focus to look at digital
• 15:13
  credentials. And so we've been focused on
• 15:17
  like the broader identity life cycle for a couple years now,
• 15:20
  but their IDV certificate, identity verification
• 15:22
  certification, which allows for like what Jim was talking about
• 15:25
  for possession based onboarding and recovery and, you know,
• 15:28
  certifying products against that.
• 15:30
  But the digital credentials and wallet space is an area where
• 15:34
  you've got a lot of feedbacks at where we could probably add some
• 15:37
  value. All right, I think everyone can
• 15:39
  understand the value and the vision of digital credentials
• 15:42
  for like literally your wallet, your physical wallet is
• 15:45
  digitized like no different than like right now, you do mobile
• 15:48
  payments, that's a digitization of your, of your credit card,
• 15:50
  but why not your identity and your passport and your diploma
• 15:54
  and your fishing license, whatever else you need to have
• 15:56
  digitized is all there, right And accessible to you, rooted
• 16:00
  in, you know, a trusted, you know, proof of real world
• 16:03
  identity that allows you to, to leverage this in a, in a very
• 16:06
  nimble, you know, efficient fashion.
• 16:09
  So everyone's had this vision for literally for decades.
• 16:11
  We have governments, we have pushing on this to happen.
• 16:14
  You know, a lot of states have mobile driver's licenses here in
• 16:16
  the United States, more famously than Europe.
• 16:21
  You know, the European Union is pushing every member state to
• 16:24
  have digital wallets by the end of 2026.
• 16:26
  So what's been holding us back is not, you know, vision or
• 16:29
  ambition, but what's been holding it back, I think is, you
• 16:32
  know, there there's things that we could do to unlock this,
• 16:35
  right? And then I think that's what
• 16:36
  we're focused on doing is bringing the three things that
• 16:38
  Fido Alliance does and does very well into this space.
• 16:42
  You know, we do as an alliance, you know, we create technical
• 16:45
  specifications, we run marketing and enablement programs, and we
• 16:48
  run a certification program that really unlocks the value of open
• 16:51
  standards. So you think about passkeys,
• 16:53
  right? We have CTAP and web auth N we
• 16:55
  certified products against those B to B products people can
• 16:57
  deploy against and enablement. And that was a passkey moment.
• 17:01
  All right, So like web auth and five O 2 existed before
• 17:04
  passkey's. But when we came up with the
• 17:06
  passkey, you know, the brand, the logo program, the user
• 17:09
  guidelines, all of a sudden they gave a name and some commonality
• 17:12
  to what people have been doing. And it really spurred all the
• 17:15
  growth that we've been seeing that with passkey's.
• 17:17
  So we've been talking to major issuers, digital credentials,
• 17:22
  major consumers, digital credentials about, you know,
• 17:24
  what do they see hold the market back?
• 17:26
  And and yeah, we think there's opportunity for us to provide
• 17:30
  value there alongside partner organizations like Open ID
• 17:33
  Foundation and ISO. So you mentioned Europe and Jim
• 17:37
  and I were at the EIC conference in Berlin.
• 17:41
  Yeah. Earlier this year.
• 17:42
  Great. Conference, what struck me is
• 17:44
  how far ahead they are when it comes to digitalization of their
• 17:48
  credentials. So you mentioned, you know, the
• 17:50
  the EU and a member nations need to have something in place.
• 17:54
  One of the things I learned there was there's actually a
• 17:56
  financial implication if they don't do it, it's some sort of
• 18:00
  fine or tax or something that, you know, the country has to pay
• 18:04
  if they don't do it. By that time I was like, OK,
• 18:06
  well, that's that's one way to get people motivated.
• 18:08
  I don't know if that works, right.
• 18:10
  Yeah, I don't know how that would work in the US because we
• 18:12
  see the fragmentation with mobile drivers license, for
• 18:14
  example. So trying to get, you know, 50
• 18:16
  States and territories plus territories, right, to try and
• 18:20
  get on the same path I think everyone wants.
• 18:24
  To do that, like what? Do you see as holding back like
• 18:27
  that specific theory? Is it just that the politics and
• 18:30
  or is it something else? No, I think.
• 18:31
  It's the one thing we want to look at doing is providing some
• 18:33
  sort of wallet certification, right?
• 18:35
  And so there's different protocols out.
• 18:36
  There's ISO protocol, there's Openty foundation protocol, We
• 18:39
  have a protocol that can be used for, you know, credential
• 18:42
  presentation across devices. These are all things that can be
• 18:45
  used for as, as part of a wallet.
• 18:48
  And I think that there's a lack of, we feel like there's a value
• 18:51
  to be added like by by launching A certification program, you
• 18:54
  know, for wallets, for the wallet providers and for the
• 18:58
  relying parties as well. And that's the type of thing
• 19:00
  that could start to kind of help catalyze the space a little bit
• 19:04
  to help move things forward. So wallets are one area.
• 19:07
  I think there's also like no one's focused on usability, not
• 19:12
  enough folks on usability. There's been some great work
• 19:14
  like on the, on the US front, like the mobile driver's license
• 19:16
  front, you know, STA Secure Technology Alliance has done
• 19:19
  some really good kind of sessions on talking about NBL
• 19:22
  use cases, how there's been some inner OPS that have happened.
• 19:26
  But it's, it's, you know, it's part part, you know, pieces
• 19:30
  here, pieces there. And I think that, you know,
• 19:33
  final lines brings to the tables, right, sort of
• 19:35
  stakeholders to work with. Companies like that,
• 19:36
  organizations like that just bring greater focus on the
• 19:39
  enablement aspects of of making digital credentials a reality,
• 19:44
  you know, throughout the world. Feels like you had some early
• 19:48
  adopters. I know the one company, I know
• 19:52
  it's not their full name, but Docomo, you know, if they, they
• 19:55
  were the early adopters, then you had a lot of big tech
• 19:58
  adoption where basically all the platforms bought in on on this
• 20:02
  passkey process. To me, like that's the the head
• 20:07
  of Steam that needs to get around everything.
• 20:09
  But now that you're at that point, it seems like it's just
• 20:12
  going to roll. Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:14
  With Pat. I mean, I feel like we're making
• 20:15
  really good progress with Passkey's and it's the set of
• 20:17
  stakeholders that we have in the alliance that helps makes this
• 20:19
  happen. I think we're, you know,
• 20:21
  incredibly unique in the sense that we're very fortunate to
• 20:24
  have a broad set of organizations, right.
• 20:26
  So all the major platforms, the device manufacturers, leaders
• 20:30
  and identity and you know, security technology governments
• 20:35
  or members of Fido Alliance. And then last but not least,
• 20:37
  like the service providers who need Fido to succeed, right.
• 20:41
  And then they've really driven a lot of the use cases and driven
• 20:43
  a lot of the adoption of passkeys in the market.
• 20:46
  And so then we as a life, you know, look at what we've done
• 20:48
  and we've also done other work also like in credential exchange
• 20:51
  powder device on board. So we've proven that we can
• 20:53
  execute on passkeys, but also, you know, adjacent spaces.
• 20:57
  So as our stakeholders got together, you know, then they
• 20:59
  talk about what what you know, where are some other common pain
• 21:02
  points. You know, one of them was around
• 21:04
  digital credentials, right? And they feel like, you know,
• 21:06
  they like collaborating inside a fighter alliance.
• 21:08
  We want to be more collaboration and that's really they're the
• 21:11
  ones really pushing for us to take on this very important work
• 21:14
  and we will take on this work and we'll execute against that.
• 21:17
  Do you think that for this to move forward, you still need to
• 21:20
  continue to have the major players like Google, Apple,
• 21:24
  Microsoft, right? They when those three died
• 21:26
  involved with pass keys, that was like, OK, now we're getting
• 21:29
  somewhere. Is it similar for wallets?
• 21:34
  Obviously Apple Pay is huge. You've got Samsung wallet,
• 21:37
  you've got Android wallet. I don't think Microsoft has a
• 21:39
  wallet. And so much infrastructure
• 21:42
  actually. So Apple, Google, Microsoft,
• 21:44
  Samsung Paytal, Visa, MasterCard, anti to Docomo,
• 21:48
  different mobile operators. And in Korea we have SK Telecom.
• 21:53
  Yeah, well, so like, literally. Like, right.
• 21:55
  If you forget one, then we'll yeah, yeah.
• 21:57
  There's a lot we have a lot of, but like really those are the
• 21:59
  the types of companies that have a very vested interest in, in
• 22:02
  seeing this space. A lock.
• 22:04
  Right. And, and, and it's a never as
• 22:05
  interest to see this space mature and, and happen, You
• 22:08
  know, this stands to increase commerce and reduce fraud,
• 22:12
  right? And so I think one of the
• 22:13
  biggest challenges that like payment networks have, or, you
• 22:16
  know, payment companies like a PayPal is, is fraud, right?
• 22:20
  And also they want to be wallet, they can beat wallet providers.
• 22:22
  So they're supposed kind of cost savings and financial
• 22:24
  opportunity with digital credentials.
• 22:26
  And so, you know, to be clear, these companies wants to do
• 22:30
  this, you know, not, you know, yes, it's for the sake of
• 22:32
  society, but it's for their benefit as well.
• 22:34
  And that's, that's the whole point of standards, right?
• 22:37
  Standards are not all about altruism.
• 22:38
  It's about, you know, basically deciding like, hey, look, we're
• 22:41
  going to commoditize a certain level of technology and compete
• 22:44
  on top of that so that we can all be more efficient in in how
• 22:47
  we invest our R&D and how we compete and how we deliver
• 22:49
  better services to the world at large.
• 22:51
  And that's what standards are about.
• 22:52
  That's what Fido's about. And that's where that's where
• 22:55
  we're doing pass keys that that will aim to do with our partners
• 22:59
  in the ecosystem with Wallace and credentials.
• 23:02
  That predictability is a big, big part of this, right?
• 23:04
  Is here's what to expect. You know it's going to be this
• 23:07
  format or whatever, right process, and having the ability
• 23:11
  to count on that is such a big part of the experience.
• 23:14
  Yes, yeah, absolutely. So the conference is called the
• 23:17
  Fennecate. Yes.
• 23:17
  Now we're moving into identity verification.
• 23:20
  Are we keeping the name authenticate or are we going to
• 23:21
  try to come up with something new like how's that going to?
• 23:24
  Work. Yeah, we, we don't, we don't
• 23:25
  have plans to change the name authenticate, but I think.
• 23:26
  Oh, you don't have the domain name right, So.
• 23:29
  But. But I think that, you know, it's
• 23:31
  important for us to get the word out as we plan for next year's
• 23:33
  show that we'll be talking about authenticate and more
• 23:35
  authentication and more. And actually, if you look at the
• 23:38
  agenda this year, there's a lot of good content on visual
• 23:41
  credentials, on agentic AI, on payments, on automotive, right?
• 23:45
  So other things, again, authentication is the front door
• 23:47
  for a lot of these things. Passkeys are a front door for a
• 23:50
  lot of these things. But also there are other
• 23:52
  applications, other use cases and full, full adjacencies to
• 23:56
  passkeys that we will address. And we'll want to get the word
• 23:58
  out to people that if you want to talk about those things, you
• 24:01
  know, authenticate's a great place to come to talk about them
• 24:03
  with the experts. So you've got other conferences
• 24:06
  as well, right? So this is the one that's in
• 24:07
  Carlsbad. Yes, there's one in Asia.
• 24:09
  I think that's going to take one.
• 24:10
  Yes. Well, we are announcing this
• 24:12
  week, so will have been announced by the time this airs
• 24:15
  that we are launching authenticate APEC in Singapore
• 24:19
  in June of 2026, I think June 2nd through 4th.
• 24:24
  Double check those dates before you book travel Tuesday through
• 24:28
  Thursday in Singapore. Yeah.
• 24:29
  So we're very excited to expand the brand into Asia.
• 24:35
  In 2023 and 2024. We had something called the Fido
• 24:38
  EPAC Summit. The first one is hosted in
• 24:41
  Vietnam, the next one in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
• 24:45
  Both are fantastic events, kind of regional events.
• 24:47
  We had probably 3-4 hundred people attend both of those,
• 24:52
  which is very inspiring to see, you know, traveling halfway
• 24:54
  around the world to see people who are super interested to
• 24:57
  learn about Fido and how to deploy Fido and how to deploy
• 25:00
  pass keys. So we're basically just kind of
• 25:02
  extending the Fido and the Authenticate brand into that
• 25:06
  activity, tying into our member meeting that happens at the same
• 25:09
  time in Singapore next year. So we're very excited to kind of
• 25:13
  take that next step at this conference and with our broader
• 25:16
  Fido community. So last question is this, what
• 25:20
  do you notice as a is the biggest difference between the
• 25:24
  US audience when it comes to fight alliance and pass keys and
• 25:28
  not any verification versus audiences in other parts of the
• 25:31
  world you've had these conversations like do you notice
• 25:33
  anything different? But the audiences?
• 25:36
  Yeah. I mean more like is their
• 25:38
  interest in different spots? Are they having different
• 25:41
  messages? Like what's the?
• 25:42
  Yeah, I don't. It's hard.
• 25:43
  To generalize, you know, like you said, like in Europe for
• 25:46
  example, and lots tied to digital identity, like what can
• 25:50
  I do like closer to kind of government oriented
• 25:53
  applications. Although you know, I talked to
• 25:54
  the good folks from Abalka, you know, the Spanish bank, they
• 25:57
  were here this week and you know, they're expanding their
• 25:59
  pass key rollout. So a lot of the same consumer
• 26:00
  applications are happening, you know, in Europe as are happening
• 26:04
  here, but it's probably more of a kind of regulatory lean in
• 26:08
  Asia, you know, there may be some more mobile first type
• 26:10
  experiences and Southeast Asia has some more emerging country
• 26:14
  emerging opportunities. But we were down in Australia
• 26:17
  this year in February in like Australia, just like, you know,
• 26:19
  on the bleeding edge of a passkey adoption.
• 26:22
  All right. So like U Bank, which is the
• 26:25
  subsidiary of NAB, A&Z Bank, you know, are also committing to or
• 26:31
  supporting passkeys. Now there's conversation today
• 26:34
  from Vicroads, which is like the equivalent of the state of
• 26:37
  Victoria's DMV about how they've moved to like they're moving
• 26:40
  towards 80% adoption of passkeys.
• 26:42
  So if the adoption in Australia is phenomenal.
• 26:45
  So long answer short, it's hard to generalize, but the good news
• 26:48
  is we're seeing adoption go all over the place.
• 26:50
  And the one area that we've yet to really engage with where
• 26:54
  there's a lot of activities in Brazil, right?
• 26:57
  So to take part in the open banking, open finance activity
• 27:00
  in Brazil, you need to have a Fido 2 certified server.
• 27:03
  So there are dozens of banks in Brazil that are now Fido
• 27:06
  certified. Every mobile payment there is
• 27:09
  using the passkey or a body mobile payment, I shouldn't say
• 27:11
  every, a lot of mobile payments they are using passkeys, just
• 27:15
  pay as a new member of Fight Alliance, they're driving a lot
• 27:17
  of that work along with Visa in Brazil.
• 27:19
  So there's a lot of activity in South America as well.
• 27:22
  So look, I think what we've done as an alliance with our
• 27:25
  stakeholders is, you know, put great technology out to market,
• 27:28
  you know, make it available to people, building in devices that
• 27:30
  everyone can use. And as a result, you know, we
• 27:33
  collectively are starting to address the password problem,
• 27:36
  which has really plagued the role for decades, decades.
• 27:41
  Yeah. Really.
• 27:42
  Literally. Yeah, like.
• 27:44
  Yes, it's a very dawn of. Time, yeah.
• 27:46
  Yeah. And The thing is like we've been
• 27:48
  aware of the the challenge for you know, 20 something years,
• 27:52
  which is when the MFA first started coming out, right.
• 27:54
  And the answer has always been like how to make passwords Sup
• 27:57
  less with more, more layers. And that's that's a good short
• 27:59
  term answer was as we know that's not sustainable.
• 28:02
  So passkeys are a password replacement.
• 28:06
  And you know, the reason we're seeing adoption at the scale
• 28:09
  we're seeing it is because they work, they provide returns.
• 28:12
  And again, that's where we're starting to quantify with the
• 28:14
  passkey index. We're trying to reinforce that
• 28:16
  was shows like this with things like Passkey Central to help
• 28:19
  companies and organizations move their passkey implementations
• 28:22
  forward so that ultimately you know, this is all you know in in
• 28:26
  the name of, of creating a safer Internet.
• 28:29
  It's been an amazing ride for the last few years and I, I just
• 28:32
  want to say thank you for your support of this show.
• 28:35
  You know, had it been on so many times.
• 28:36
  I know you're a busy guy, so trying to carve out time for you
• 28:38
  with this type of thing is always fun.
• 28:42
  We did Fido feud you did last night.
• 28:45
  It ended in a tie. I'm not sure how to feel about
• 28:47
  it yet. The guarantees to repeat for.
• 28:51
  I kind of think it was fixed. We certainly can't cut fight a
• 28:54
  few now. Right now has to come back
• 28:56
  because there's a tie, you know, so.
• 28:57
  We have to come up with like Brandy for it.
• 28:59
  I'm I'm already kind of leaning to fight a feud, fight a feud
• 29:02
  2026, the rematch of the rematch.
• 29:04
  Oh well, there's something like rematch, but your your team has
• 29:08
  been great to work with. Give a shout out to Adrian.
• 29:10
  She was awesome with all time and she she manned the sound
• 29:12
  effects. So I don't think by the time
• 29:14
  this episode goes like people won't have that as an episode,
• 29:16
  but we'll help to get that out by the end of the year.
• 29:19
  But it was so much fun. So thank you for.
• 29:20
  Letting us we have a great team of Fido Alliance and I couldn't
• 29:24
  think more highly my colleagues. It's really an honor to work
• 29:26
  with them. Also, everyone's very passionate
• 29:29
  about what we do. We believe what we're doing.
• 29:31
  You know, ask everyone who works with us to, you know, first of
• 29:34
  all, sign up to believe in the mission and be missionary about
• 29:37
  it. And everyone is.
• 29:38
  And so we take a lot of pride in what we do.
• 29:40
  And I think it shows here at the show and everything that the the
• 29:43
  Fido team does, it's. Been great.
• 29:45
  So we'll go ahead and leave it there.
• 29:47
  I think for this week, idcpodcast.com, idcpodcast.tv
• 29:51
  for the YouTube and the all that good stuff.
• 29:53
  So like and subscribe. Let's bring back Andrew for 11
• 29:57
  probably in a couple months and yeah, we'll leave it there.
• 30:00
  So thanks everyone for watching and are listening.
• 30:02
  Andrew, thank you for your time. Thanks guys.
• 30:04
  And we'll talk with everyone in the next one.
• 30:08
  You've been listening to Identity at the Center.
• 30:11
  We hope you've enjoyed the show. Make sure to like, rate and
• 30:16
  review, and we'll be back soon. But in the meantime, hit the
• 30:19
  website at identity@thecenter.com.
• 30:23
  See you next time on Identity at the Center.