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The FIDO Alliance announced the launch of the FIDO Device Onboard (FDO) protocol, a new, open IoT device onboarding standard that reportedly enables devices to simply and securely onboard to cloud and on-premise 
management platforms. Through this standard, the FIDO Alliance addresses challenges of security, cost and complexity tied to IoT device deployment at scale. FIDO Device Onboard furthers the fundamental vision of the Alliance, which has brought together 250+ of the most influential and innovative companies and government agencies from around the world to address cyber security in order to eliminate data breaches and enable secure online experiences.
The FIDO Alliance’s FDO specification for IoT was collaboratively developed to solve the issue of IoT security in onboarding, just as it has done with its FIDO authentication standards to help address the global data breach problem. The FDO specification has reached Proposed Standard status and is open and free to implement. Initially, the specification is targeted at industrial and commercial applications. Developers can view and download the specification at https://fidoalliance.org/specifications/download-iot-specifications/
A Fast, Secure IoT Device Onboarding Standard
FDO is an automated onboarding protocol for IoT devices, leveraging asymmetric public key cryptography to provide the industrial IoT industry with a fast and secure way to onboard any device to any device management system.
The business benefits from the FIDO Device Onboard standard include:
- Simplicity – Businesses no longer have to pay more for the lengthy and highly technical installation process than they do for the devices themselves. The highly automated FDO process can be carried out by people of any level of experience quickly and efficiently.
- Flexibility – Businesses can decide which cloud platforms they want to onboard devices to at the point of installation (as opposed to manufacture). A single device SKU can be onboarded to any platform, thereby greatly simplifying the device supply chain.
- Security – FDO leverages an “untrusted installer” approach, which means the installer no longer needs – nor do they have access to – any sensitive infrastructure/access control information to add a device to a network.
This is the latest FIDO Alliance initiative in its mission to reduce the world’s reliance on passwords with simpler, stronger authentication that prevents scalable attacks and account takeovers.