2018: A Year in Review for Yubico

2018 was an awesome year for Yubico. It was full of new product launches, business milestones, a growing team of super stars, and industry-leading innovations. It’s hard to believe that all of that happened in just one year, but it’s amazing to see how much can be accomplished together when we focus on our mission of making security available for all.

Over the years, I’ve also learned that it’s necessary to reflect on all of these accomplishments as an entrepreneur, a CEO, or an employee. This time of pause allows us to evaluate the lessons learned, set new goals, and carefully build upon the work we’ve already done. So, as we cross into 2019, here’s a quick look back at some of Yubico’s finest moments of 2018.

We invested a significant amount of time and resources into product innovation and released several major new products, all of them being the first of their kind on the market.

• The Security Key by Yubico is the first-ever security key to support FIDO2 and WebAuthn, the new global authentication standards for passwordless logins that Yubico is also the leading contributor to.
• The YubiKey 5 Series is the first-ever multi-protocol security key series to support FIDO2 and WebAuthn.
• The YubiKey FIPS Series is the first-ever multi-protocol FIPS 140-2 validated security key series.

A major part of the Yubico mission is spent on working with the larger internet ecosystem, providing them with the insight and resources they need to be successful in protecting their users’ data and privacy. As a result, several major services and leading platforms and browsers have made support for FIDO2, WebAuthn, and YubiKey strong authentication.

• Twitter adds support for FIDO U2F authentication with a YubiKey.
• AWS Identity and Access Management adds support for FIDO U2F authentication with a YubiKey.
• LastPass is the first iOS app to add support for strong YubiKey authentication via NFC.
• Microsoft Accounts adds support for YubiKey and FIDO2 to allow users to login to their accounts without a username and password.
• Additional browser support continues for WebAuthn from Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.

The developer community is core to what we do here at Yubico, and while we’ve offered free and open source code since our launch in 2008, this year we created dedicated resources to expand our offerings.

• The Yubico Developer Program is the first source for developers to gain access to YubiKey integration resources such as webinars, SDKs, implementation guides, and more.
• Yubico launches the official Works with YubiKey Program to further guide and promote service provider’s YubiKey integrations.
• The Mobile SDK for iOS was released to allow any iOS mobile app to rapidly add support for hardware-based two-factor authentication using YubiKey OTP over NFC.
• The Yubico Lightning Project was announced, extending the capabilities of the Yubico Mobile SDK for iOS to support FIDO U2F/2 authentication over a lightning connection.
• The YubiHSM open source SDK was released to allow developers to integrate with the YubiHSM 2 and enable its security capabilities for greater protection of cryptographic key material.

Last but not least, we continued to grow Yubico as a trusted leader in strong authentication with new financial investments and the addition of new talent across the globe.

• The Yubico team reached 160 people, representing 25 different nationalities, and based in eight countries: Sweden, USA, Germany, UK, Chile, Singapore, Australia and Japan.
• Yubico received investment from top-tier investor Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) in support of our mission to create a safer internet at scale. Martin Casado, general partner for a16z, also joined the Yubico board of directors.

2018 was incredible, and we plan to top it with what’s to come in 2019! Be the first to know about new products and more by signing up for our mailing list.