Yubico releases YubiKey Series 5

The company develops a hardware-based authentication device known as the YubiKey, which provides support for different authentication protocols. Organizations can use YubiKeys to enable different types of multifactor authentication and password-less authentication approaches.

The YubiKey Series 5 includes the YubiKey 5 NFC, YubiKey 5C, YubiKey 5 Nano and YubiKey 5C Nano. Each device includes the protocols included in the YubiKey 4 series: FIDO U2F, PIV (smart card), OpenPGP, Yubico OTP, OATH-TOTP, OATH-HOTP and challenge-response. iOS devices that cannot support FIDO U2F or FIDO2 over NFC at this time can still use YubiKey 5 NFC in OTP (One Time Password) mode over NFC for authentication, such as Lastpass for iOS.

While YubiKeys have typically been considered for use as part of an MFA approach, they can also be used for single-factor authentication, requiring no username or password to log in to a supported service (password-less). Moreover, Series 5 can be used in conjunction with a PIN for user verification, which the user would be able to set themselves for that YubiKey (touch + PIN).