Articles
| Open Access | Closing Enterprise Identity Assurance Gaps Through Combined FIDO2 and Certificate-Based Authentication Architectures
John R. Whitaker , Global Cybersecurity Institute, University of Edinburgh, United KingdomAbstract
The accelerating shift toward passwordless authentication, driven by technological advances in device-bound biometrics, platform authenticators, and standardized protocols, has created both opportunity and complexity for enterprise identity assurance. This article critically examines the integration of FIDO2-based passwordless mechanisms (including passkeys and CTAP/WebAuthn paradigms) with traditional certificate-based authentication to construct a hybrid, phishing-resistant, privacy-aware, and scalable identity architecture suited to modern enterprises. Drawing strictly from the provided literature, the paper synthesizes empirical and normative findings about mobile biometric advances, behavioral biometrics, FIDO2 usability and privacy implications, certificate lifecycle management, and data-protection regulation constraints (notably GDPR). The work articulates a detailed methodology for combining FIDO2 client- and server-side flows with enterprise Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), including trust anchoring, credential lifecycle orchestration, fallback and account recovery strategies, and privacy-preserving biometric handling aligned with regulatory obligations. Results are presented as descriptive analyses of anticipated security posture improvements, usability trade-offs, and operational complexity, supported by comparative studies of FIDO2 usability and biometric misconceptions. The discussion explores theoretical implications for identity assurance, counter-arguments regarding centralization and vendor lock-in, limitations in biometric entropy and behavioral approaches, and directions for future research including decentralized identifiers and semantic design patterns for passwordless applications. The article concludes with practical recommendations for phased enterprise adoption, governance controls, and technical blueprints aimed at realizing phishing-resistant, GDPR-compliant, and user-friendly authentication in heterogeneous enterprise ecosystems. (Abstract 238 words)
Keywords
FIDO2, passkeys, certificate-based authentication, passwordless
References
Das, A.; Galdi, C.; Han, H.; Ramachandra, R.; Dugelay, J.-L.; Dantcheva, A. Recent Advances in Biometric Technology for Mobile Devices. 2018. Available online: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8698587 (accessed on 26 June 2025).
Stragapede, G.; Vera-Rodriguez, R.; Tolosana, R.; Morales, A.; Acien, A.; Le Lan, G. Mobile Behavioral Biometrics for Passive Authentication. Pattern Recognit. Lett. 2022, 157, 35–41.
Malik, G. Biometric Authentication-Risks and Advancements in Biometric Security Systems. J. Comput. Sci. Technol. Stud. 2024, 6, 159–180.
Bridging Identity Assurance Gaps: Integrating FIDO2 and Certificate-Based Authentication for Phishing-Resistant, Scalable Enterprise Security. (2025). International Journal of Data Science and Machine Learning, 5(02), 9-24. https://doi.org/10.55640/ijdsml-05-02-02
GDPR. General Data Protection Regulation—Official Legal Text. 2016. Available online: https://gdpr-info.eu/ (accessed on 9 June 2025).
FIDO Alliance. Passkeys. 2025. Available online: https://fidoalliance.org/passkeys/ (accessed on 2 August 2025).
FIDO Alliance. Passkeys: Specifications Overview. 2025. Available online: https://fidoalliance.org/specifications-overview/ (accessed on 2 August 2025).
FIDO Alliance. Client to Authenticator Protocol (CTAP). 2019. Available online: https://fidoalliance.org/specs/fido-v2.0-ps-20190130/fido-client-to-authenticator-protocol-v2.0-ps-20190130.html (accessed on 9 June 2025).
FIDO Alliance. Sign in With Passkey. 2023. Available online: https://www.passkeycentral.org/design-guidelines/required-patterns/sign-in-with-a-passkey (accessed on 15 June 2025).
Lyastani, S.G.; Schilling, M.; Neumayr, M.; Backes, M.; Bugiel, S. Is FIDO2 the Kingslayer of User Authentication? A Comparative Usability Study of FIDO2 Passwordless Authentication. 2020. Available online: https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9152694 (accessed on 9 June 2025).
FIDO Alliance. FAQ on FIDO Relevance for the GDPR. 2018. Available online: https://fidoalliance.org/wp-content/uploads/FIDO_Alliance_GDPR_FAQ_September2018.pdf (accessed on 15 June 2025).
Zhidovich, A.; Lubenko, A.; Vojteshenko, I.; Andrushevich, A. Semantic Approach to Designing Applications with Passwordless Authentication According to the FIDO2 Specification.
Adams, A.; Sasse, M.A. Users are not the enemy. Commun. ACM 42(12), 40–46 (1999).
FIDO Alliance. FIDO2: WebAuthn & CTAP. Available online: https://fidoalliance.org/fido2/.
Parmar, V.; Sanghvi, H.; Patel, R.; Pandya, A. A comprehensive study on passwordless authentication. In: Proceedings 3rd International Conference on Smart Systems and Inventive Technology, Tirunelveli, India, pp. 991–997 (2020).
Singh, R.; Jain, Y.; Khawade, S.; Jinde, A.; Zanwar, S. Blockchain-based decentralized passwordless user authentication system: a Survey. Int. J. Sci. Res. Comput. Sci. Eng. Inf. Technol. 5(1), 478–485 (2019).
Lassak, L.; Hildebrandt, A.; Golla, M.; Ur, B. It’s Stored, Hopefully, on an Encrypted Server: Mitigating Users’ Misconceptions About FIDO2 Biometric WebAuthn (2021).
Owens, K.; Ur, B.; Anise, O. A Framework for Evaluating the Usability and Security of Smartphones as FIDO2 Roaming Authenticators (2020).
W3C Web Authentication Working Group. Web Authentication: An API for Accessing Scoped Credentials. W3C Recommendation (2019). Available: https://www.w3.org/TR/webauthn-1/.
Farke, F.M.; Lorenz, L.; Schnitzler, T.; Markert, P.; Dürmuth, M. “You still use the password after all”—Exploring FIDO2 Security Keys in a Small Company (2020).
Mitra, A.; Ghosh, A.; Sethuraman, S. TUSH-Key: Transferable User Secrets on Hardware Key (2023).
Article Statistics
Downloads
Copyright License
Copyright (c) 2025 John R. Whitaker

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Authors retain the copyright of their manuscripts, and all Open Access articles are disseminated under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC-BY), which licenses unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided that the original work is appropriately cited. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, and so forth in this publication, even if not specifically identified, does not imply that these names are not protected by the relevant laws and regulations.

