Lenovo leads a campaign to eliminate passwords

Lenovo, the world's second-largest supplier of personal computers, is leading a mission to replace the passwords that people and businesses use to access many online accounts and services.

The Chinese technology giant helped launch a new industry initiative yesterday, supporting technical specifications under the so-called Fast Identity Online (FIDO) system, which brings together a range of online authentication technologies as an alternative to multiple user names and passwords.

Based in California, the not-for-profit FIDO Alliance said current password-based online authentication was weak, due to the common habit of reusing secret words, the proliferation of malicious software, and phishing - referring to online scams that dupe recipients into providing their personal data. These factors have left consumers and businesses vulnerable to financial and identity theft.

FIDO combines hardware, software and online services to provide versatile and stronger security for internet users as they log on through their personal computer, smartphone or media tablet. It supports strong authentication techniques like USB security tokens used in online banking, near field communication technology developed for smartphones, and biometrics, which include fingerprint scanners and facial recognition.

Lenovo vice-president Mark Cohen said the FIDO Alliance co-founder had long advocated alternative authentication systems since it started deploying fingerprint readers on ThinkPad laptops about a decade ago.

The group's other founding members are PayPal, Infineon Technologies, Validity, Agnitio and Nok Nok Labs.