Yubico launches its smallest YubiKey yet

Yubico has launched the smallest version of its popular YubiKey hardware authentication and encryption devices yet: the $60 YubiKey 4C Nano. Like the regular YubiKey 4C device, this is a USB-C dongle. It’s essentially the USB-C version of the company’s existing YubiKey 4 Nano device for traditional USB-A ports and like its counterpart, the 4C Nano is designed to remain inside the port.

Sadly, though, while you can put the regular 4 Nano on a lanyard, you can’t do that with the 4C version. The idea here, though, as YubiKey CTO Jakob Ehrensvard writes, is to keep these small devices plugged into a laptop.

Like all YubiKeys, the 4C Nano offers strong crypto and touch-to-sign and supports the FIDO U2F (Universal 2nd Factor), one-time password (OTP), OpenPGP and PIV smart card standards. Over the course of the last few years, a number of online services started supporting the company’s keys for two-factor authentication, including Google Facebook, Dropbox, GitHub and Salesforce, as well as password managers like Dashlane and LastPass. You can also use the keys to power Windows smart card login and Windows 10’s Hello login feature. Chrome, Opera and Firefox Nightly offer native support for these security keys on Windows, Mac and Linux.

Looking ahead, Ehrensvard writes that the company is working on “broadening the protocol and platform support to keep the promise of the YubiKey being the ultimate authentication solution.” He also notes that the upcoming FIDO2 and WebAuthn standards will help it expand its platform and that the company is also working on finishing up work on the next version of its YubiHSM server module.