Apple, Google, and Microsoft plan to expand support for a common passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium; IBM shareholders have urged the company to report on concealment clauses that prevent employees from discussing workplace wrongdoing. And Wipro and HFCL team up to make 5G routers.

Apple, Google and Microsoft yesterday announced plans to expand support for a common passwordless sign-in standard created by the FIDO Alliance and the World Wide Web Consortium, according to a post on the alliance’s website.

Based on its standards — which tie authentication to a physical device, such as a user’s smartphone — users will sign in through the same action that they take multiple times each day to unlock their devices, such as a simple verification of their fingerprint or face, or a device PIN.

This new approach protects against phishing, and sign-in will be more secure compared with passwords and legacy multi-factor technologies such as one-time passcodes sent over SMS, according to the post.

IBM shareholders at the IT giant's annual meeting last month endorsed a proposal to have the company produce a public report on the potential risks arising from its use of concealment clauses that constrain disclosure of workplace misconduct, The Register reports, citing a statement yesterday from Clean Yield Asset Management, a US-based investment firm focused on corporate social responsibility.

In a statement on its website, Clean Yield Asset Management said that 64.7 percent of IBM shareholders supported a proposal submitted by the investment firm calling on the company to report on its use of concealment clauses at IBM’s 2022 Annual Meeting of Stockholders.

The support for this proposal comes at a time when leading companies such as Google and Salesforce are scaling back the use of these problematic clauses and lawmakers at the state and federal levels are taking steps to end their use.

Specifically, Clean Yield’s proposal calls on the Board to report on the potential risks to IBM associated with its use of concealment clauses in the context of harassment, discrimination, and other unlawful acts. Concealment clauses are any employment or post-employment agreement, such as arbitration, nondisclosure or non-disparagement agreements that IBM asks employees to sign which would limit their ability to discuss unlawful acts in the workplace, including harassment and discrimination.

Wipro, India’s fourth-biggest IT services provider, and HFCL, a leading telecom equipment manufacturer and technology provider, have entered into a partnership to engineer a variety of 5G transport products that include Cell Site Router, Distributed Unit Aggregation Router, and Centralised Unit Aggregation Router, the companies said in a press release.

With expertise in product engineering, transport network technologies and 5G, Wipro will co-develop equipment with HFCL. Wipro will use Tarang Labs, its product compliance and certification labs in Bangalore, for hardware integration, validation and pre-certification.

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