The Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) announced a new framework for integrating FIDO Device Onboard (FDO) and WBA OpenRoamingTM technologies. This initiative enables a ‘zero-touch’ seamless and secure onboarding process for IoT Wi-Fi devices, parallel to the simplicity and security of Wi-Fi device onboarding using OpenRoaming. The “OpenRoaming for IoT - FIDO Device Onboarding Framework” report details how these technologies work together to simplify and secure the onboarding process for IoT devices, transforming large-scale IoT deployments.

The integration between OpenRoaming and FDO is a significant milestone in the realm of Wi-Fi device onboarding and addresses critical challenges of large-scale IoT deployments by providing a secure, scalable and automated solution. By automating the onboarding process, this allows headless and other pre-configured FDO IoT devices to be onboarded straight out of the box using OpenRoaming, it can then receive new OpenRoaming credentials, allowing it to connect via OpenRoaming permanently, or receive credentials to connect to a private Wi-Fi network for a permanent connection.

Wi-Fi-based IoT devices have historically faced challenges due to the complexity of manual onboarding processes, making large-scale deployment inefficient. By leveraging the OpenRoaming global network of millions of hotspots, the onboarding process becomes seamless, accelerating the adoption of Wi-Fi-based IoT devices across sectors like smart cities, manufacturing and logistics.

Key benefits of the framework:

  • Zero-touch, secure onboarding: Automates device onboarding, enhancing operational efficiency and ensuring secure authentication.
  • OpenRoaming and FDO integration: Describes how pre-configured OpenRoaming and FDO credentials enable seamless device connectivity across networks.
  • Alternative network environments: Covers complex deployments and provisioning challenges.
  • Supply chain security: Ensures device security through ownership vouchers and cryptographic mechanisms.

Tiago Rodrigues, CEO of the WBA, said, “This new framework will turbocharge secure and efficient IoT device deployments, overcoming the challenges of onboarding IoT devices into a Wi-Fi network. This framework standardizes OpenRoaming for FDO, encouraging a widespread adoption and cross-industry collaboration, and will enable a wide range of industries to benefit from improved operational efficiency and security across their IoT devices into Wi-Fi networks.”

Tomas Bäckström, director of delivery services, Enea, said, "Since 2018, our vision has been to enable secure, automatic Wi-Fi onboarding by harnessing existing Wi-Fi IoT device certificates. This requires a united, industry-wide effort and WBA is the ideal body to lead the charge. This framework could be a game-changer in solving long-standing challenges for large-scale deployments across industries like smart cities and logistics, and we eagerly anticipate seeing the first devices hit the market."

Dr. Necati Canpolat, senior staff wireless architect at Intel and WBA Board Director, added: "WBA's work on zero-touch onboarding with OpenRoaming and managing the ownership of industrial IoT devices with FIDO will address a critical industry challenge and facilitate large-scale deployments of these devices. Intel is proud to lead this initiative at WBA."