Search engine giant Google had recently announced that it was testing the physical security keys with its employees. The physical security keys are used instead of the passwords and one-time codes. There were more than 85,000 of them and have been successfully phished. On July 25, 2018, the company announced that they have created their own line of security keys known as the Titan Security Key. Google has been testing them in-house since more than a year.
The Titan Security Key are physical keys which are used to provide user authentication over USB and Bluetooth. These devices will not work on phishing sites and made to look like real deal. The Titan Security Keys are in line with the FIDO (Fast Identity Online) specification and also includes firmware which was developed by Google to verify its authentication. Jennifer Lin, the Product Management Director at Google Cloud said, “We’ve long advocated the use of security keys as the strongest, most phishing-resistant authentication factor for high-value users, especially cloud admins, to protect against the potentially damaging consequences of credential theft”.
The Titan Security Keys are available for the Google Cloud customers and will soon be available for anyone to purchase on the Google Store. Moreover, the users will also be able to use the key device to authenticate a service which is non-Google. Google believed that passwords and second factor authentication codes could be interpreted or phished. The search engine has been promoting the idea of physical security keys for a more secure authentication process for a while.
Even in 2017, the search engine had launched the Advanced Protection setting for Google accounts that was aimed towards the high risk users like activists, journalists and politicians and it also included the use of security key. The company has also advised the users to create two of them so that they have a back up key.
Photo Credits: 9to5google
