Physical security keys remain one of the best ways to secure user accounts, but the fact that new users have to register them before they can use them often adds quite a bit of friction. Yubico, the company behind the ubiquitous FIDO-certified YubiKeys, is now making this significantly easier by giving its enterprise users the ability to send pre-registered keys to employees. When they receive their new keys, all they have to do is navigate to their company’s web application or identity providers’ login page, enter a PIN provided by their IT department and that’s that.
The new FIDO Pre-reg service is now in a limited access period, specifically for Okta customers in the U.S. (the company is making the announcement at Oktane, Okta’s user conference). As of now, interested users must purchase keys through Yubico’s YubiEnterprise Subscription program and use Okta Identity Engine (OIE), Okta Adaptive MFA (AMFA) and Okta Workflows. For now, the program will include the YubiKey5 NFC and YubiKey 5C NFC keys. At general availability, the program will support all of the company’s keys.
“Organizations have historically been challenged to accelerate user adoption of phishing-resistant MFA and FIDO passkey solutions like YubiKeys at speed and scale,” said Jeff Wallace, senior vice president, Product, at Yubico. “Typically, administrators manually register YubiKeys on behalf of each employee before delivering to them in-office or shipping the key to the employee’s location. FIDO Pre-reg eliminates these challenges and provides a quick and easy way to adopt phishing resistance throughout a company on day one with turnkey YubiKey activation — all while reducing IT costs.”
In an interview last month, Yubico co-founder Stina Ehrensvärd told me that the company is now building more than a million YubiKeys per month. Only a few years ago, it was producing about 200,000 per month. In part, the company has been able to increase production, which is mostly happening in Yubico’s home country of Sweden, because it has invested heavily in automation.
“For many years at Yubico, we did not have enough stock,” she told me. “We’d run out of keys on our web store and people had to wait. That problem is behind us for now — until we get more orders — but at this time, we have plenty in stock and it’s very reassuring to know that we can actually make big volumes, good quality, high security, and with good margins.”