As part of its announcement at the Aspen Cyber Summit in New York City today, Google also said that in 2024 it will give 100,000 of the new Titan keys to high-risk individuals around the world. The effort is part of Google’s Advanced Protection Program, which offers vulnerable users expanded account monitoring and threat protection. The company has given away Titan keys through the program in the past, and today it cited the rise of phishing attacks and upcoming global elections as two examples of the need to continue expanding the use of secure authentication methods like passkeys.
Hardware authentication tokens have unique protective benefits because they are siloed, stand-alone devices. But they still need to be rigorously secured to ensure they don’t introduce a different point of weakness. And as with any product, they can have vulnerabilities. In 2019, for example, Google recalled and replaced its Titan BLE-branded security key because of a flaw in its Bluetooth implementation.
When it comes to the new Titan generation, Google tells WIRED that, as with all of its products, it conducted an extensive internal security review on the devices and it also contracted with two external auditors, NCC Group and Ninja Labs, to conduct independent assessments of the new key.
