fingerprint hardware tracking windows installing

Sweden-based Yubico is the largest security key maker.Įnrolling the YubiKey Bio for use at a website requires you to register your fingerprint, similar to the setup process you may have experienced for phones or PCs. Feitian, a Chinese company that also makes Google's Titan hardware security keys, has been selling its BioPass keys for years. The YubiKey Bio, whose release coincides with National Cyber Security Awareness Month, isn't the first biometric security key. They don't support NFC wireless links that other security keys use to communicate with phones, though. That ensures it can be useful for sites that don't support the biometric approach. Two-factor authentication helps but isn't as secure as you might expect.

Dumping passwords can improve your security - really.

(Head to its Security section, then the Advanced Security Options subsection.) Once I enrolled my fingerprint, logging in involved entering my username, inserting the key, then touching the YubiKey bio's fingerprint sensor. I tried the YubiKey Bio with my passwordless Microsoft account and found it easy to set up through the process for adding a hardware security key offered on the Microsoft account page. It also uses hardware security keys to protect employee accounts. And on Tuesday, it announced that this year it will switch 150 million people to two-factor authentication (2FA), which it calls two-step verification (2SV).

On Friday, it announced it's given out 100,000 of its own Titan hardware security keys to election officials and female politicians, activists, journalists and executives through its Advanced Protection Program. Google, an enormous player with billions of people using services like Gmail, YouTube and Google Workspace, is working hard to overcome the weaknesses of passwords alone. In addition to hardware security keys, the tech industry is easing password problems with biometrics, authentication apps on phones and an authentication standard called FIDO (Fast Identity Online). Tech giants like Microsoft, Facebook and Google are shoring up password weaknesses and, in some cases, moving beyond them entirely. They can be stolen, forgotten, reused and easily guessed. Passwords are convenient and familiar but face a host of security shortcomings. The YubiKey Bio keys are part of a growing movement to overthrow passwords, the reigning method for login technology. The key itself stores the fingerprint data and tells the site when you've successfully authenticated. That could replace a password altogether on sites like Microsoft's that let you register the key. The YubiKey Bio keys add another layer of protection to the authentication process by enabling a second factor of identification, a fingerprint.

Fingerprint hardware tracking windows installing