Yubico Yubikey 5C NFC Review: Is it a good match for consumers?

The Yubico Yubikey 5C NFC provides a flexible way to securely access a lot of services, though it’s a touch pricey for some consumer needs.

Score: 3/5

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In this review

Yubico Yubikey 5C NFC Design
Yubico Yubikey 5C NFC Performance
Yubico Yubikey 5C NFC Conclusion

One of the smartest things you can do to secure your online accounts is to enable a level of multi-factor authentication. This involves setting up a secondary authentication point beyond your passkey or password, so that if there’s a breach of your fundamental details, online miscreants can’t easily access your accounts, finances or identity.

The Yubico Yubikey 5C NFC provides a very strong level of physical authentication, and while it mostly works well, it may well be overkill for consumer-grade security — and you do need to be careful to ensure that you’ve got either secure ways to access your accounts if something goes wrong or the key is physically lost.

Ethical disclaimer: The Yubico Yubikey 5C NFC used in this review was sent to me by Yubico for the purposes of review. That gets them a review, nothing more, no editorial oversight or anything of the like. I do feel that strong and upfront disclosure is important, especially as so many sites overlook it or bury it at the bottom of articles. Now, on with the review.

Further ethical update: Yubico’s PR agency also sent through a super thanks and financial donation to running ART after this review was published. I did not know this was coming, and it had no effect on the review whatsoever. For more on the ethics of how I handle this kind of matter, see here. 

Design

Yubico has a range of security keys with slightly different connections to each, so it is important to grab the one that’ll work best with ideally most of if not all of your hardware.

In this respect the Yubico Yubikey 5C NFC is one of its more flexible offerings, providing both wireless NFC communications as well as direct USB-C connectivity.

It features a small golden disc with a Y logo on it embedded within, used as a simple touch sensor when authenticating with it. This isn’t a biometric sensor – which is to say that it’s not reading your fingerprint, there’s no enrolling thumbs or anything of the sort – though Yubico does have some products that incorporate that kind of technology.

Physically… it looks like a USB flash drive. One on the smaller side to be sure, measuring in at 18x45x3.7mm and weighing just 4.3g. Portability is key here, but then so is the idea that you really don’t want to lose it. It has a single hole punched through the top of it to make it feasible to connect it to your key ring.

It’s also quite easy to get out of its packaging.

I’ve actually used a different Yubikey on my keyring for some years now, and despite being battered around in pockets, bags and everywhere else as I’ve traversed the years and the kilometres, it’s holding up just fine. I have little doubt that the Yubico Yubikey 5C NFC should be just as robust.

In the interests of science, I did throw it at the floor a couple of times to “test” its durability. It survived, though I should note that if you do that on carpet it’ll bounce and fly under nearby furniture, making it a pain to retrieve, so maybe don’t try this at home. Is that a silly test? Yes, it is – more on my thoughts on online “destruction” tests in the video below:

The Yubico Yubikey 5C NFC is also IP68 rated for water resistance, so it should survive accidental immersion in water – though as with all things IP rated in this way, water resistance is not the same thing as waterproof.

Performance

In terms of security protocols, what the Yubikey 5C NFC supports is quite exhaustive. That’s not by accident, because this really is a product primarily aimed at the business and enterprise markets, where robust security shouldn’t be treated as an afterthought.

Of course the same observation is true for consumers, but the list of security protocols understood by your Aunt Bertha isn’t going to be quite as lengthy.

Officially speaking, as per Yubico, the list of supported security functions includes WebAuthn, FIDO2 CTAP1, FIDO2 CTAP2, FIDO2 CTAP2.1, Universal 2nd Factor (U2F), Smart card (PIV-compatible), Yubico OTP, OATH – HOTP (Event), OATH – TOTP (Time), OpenPGP and Secure Static Passwords.

The list of supported services that work with Yubikeys is… too long to replicate here, frankly. Here’s a link to the services that can use Yubikeys for authentication for you to parse through at your leisure.

The reality here is that an overwhelming quantity of them are indeed business-centric, though a number of more consumer-focused platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Google, Twitch, Epic Games and Reddit (to name but a few) are also on board. That’s again in line with the fact that this is mostly a business product – but that doesn’t mean you can’t or shouldn’t use it to secure your online life as much as possible.

I will state at the outset that specifically checking the security credentials and trying to hack into the Yubikey 5C NFC is honestly beyond my own technical abilities, but the reality here is that it’s a long-standing brand with (to the best of my knowledge and research) no instances of specific breaches to speak of.

Setting up the Yubikey 5C NFC is an interesting process – because it very much depends on the way that you want to use it, whether that’s for multi factor authentication, typically using it as a secondary authenticator along with something like a password or passkey, or for One Time Password authentication.

So for example, if you want to use the Yubikey 5C NFC as a direct login to your Google account, you can do so rather directly by going into your Google Account settings, then into security and into 2-step verification and choosing to add your security key – in this case, the Yubikey 5C NFC.

Plug it into a USB-C device – the first time authentication seemingly can’t be NFC, though latter usage can be – and it’ll become your authentication method from then on for devices that support either USB-C or NFC.

It’s worth noting here that for many of these services (and Google is a good example) it’s a very good idea to either enroll multiple physical keys (though that does raise the price you’re paying) or grab backup authentication codes. That’s because if something does happen to the physical Yubikey 5C NFC, you want to have a secure way to get back into your accounts.

Yubico also has an authenticator app, used for services that instead use OATH-TOTP codes if that’s what’s needed. Setup here is a little more complex and will vary a little by service. I had few problems with the services that I added the Yubikey 5C NFC to in this way, though in this setup you do need the Yubico Authenticator app installed on your smartphone, tablet or computer, because what it’s unlocking are those time-sensitive login codes.

I’ve tested this across both USB-C on PC and Mac, and via NFC on iOS and Android devices, and rather like Apple’s old marketing slogan… it just works. There’s sometimes a little waving around needed on the NFC side depending on where the reader is on your device if you’re not plugging it in, but that’s a pretty quick learning curve unless you change phones on a very regular basis. Which I do, but not everyone reviews far too many phones, so for most that’ll be a one-time process that will also teach you where your NFC hardware is on your phone.

Logically you could just use a standalone authenticator app such as Google Authenticator on a device, but having a separate physical device to unlock your authenticator is adding another layer of security to the process. For consumers at the asking price of the Yubikey 5C NFC that might be overkill – though that of course depends on what you’re using it to secure in the first place.

Yubikey 5C NFC: Alex’s Verdict

Adding googly eyes to the Yubikey 5C NFC does not affect its security in any way at all.

At a business level, the appeal of devices like the Yubikey is pretty clear, because you’re protecting key business assets or access to crucial online services.

Those are issues that do affect consumers as well as our lives shift ever more online, though it is worth checking that the Yubikey service works with the online services that you use every day to ensure that the asking price for each Yubikey makes sense.

Yubikey 5C NFC: Pricing and availability

The Yubikey 5C NFC retails in Australia for $97; other models carry slightly different feature sets and asking prices.

	Buy The Yubico Yubikey 5C NFC!	Buy On Amazon

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