There is no question about it; when it comes to our Chromebook there are a few things we appreciate the most and among those features, security comes on top of the list. At least for us here at MeetChrome. Universal second factor authentication or in short U2F is a method of adding another layer of security besides the classical username and password, such as a device that the user only carries or has on himself.

Although not a new thing, universal second factor authentication is not very commonly used nowadays and this is one of the reasons behind the rising numbers of so-called computer criminals. According to recent research standard security procedures such as the username and password alone used by most online services have become quite easily hacked by cybercriminals.

A lot of security services firms like Duo Security are using tokens, SMS with passcodes, or phone callbacks to add additional security layers for their clients. Other classical examples are fingerprint sensors that we currently find on most smartphones. You can set up your smartphone to ask for your fingerprint after entering let’s say your username and password in order to login into your bank account.

With the future addition of universal second factor authentication methods that use fingerprint sensors to Chromebooks, it seems that some devs are looking into the possibility of making the U2F a built-in feature of Chrome OS. Some interesting projects regarding this matter can be found in the Chromium repository.

With more and more devices getting biometrical scanners, it’s been nearly 4 months since we first found out that Google developers also started working on Chromebook support for them. When fingerprint sensors will be present in most Chromebook, a lot of the actions like accessing websites or apps that now usually cost us time can be achieved with a simple swipe of a finger and a scan. We are quite excited and can not wait to test such a feature after it has been implemented . With so many Android apps getting biometric support it comes only natural for Chromebooks to get it too.