Hospitals can be fragile and violent places. As a result, the health care field is ramping up its security services to meet the threat. The video surveillance cameras, ID badges and bracelets outfitted with RFID or other smart technology for patients and staff, the integrated alarm systems, mass notifications, license plate readers, and smart card-enabled access control, all combine for the kind of convergent security architecture that the country’s 5,627 registered hospitals, big and small, are reaching for today.

Employees have admitted that they will share and even sell passwords. All of this, and even with all the other faults around passwords, they aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. In the meantime enterprises need to layer other security technologies in order to secure access.

Every morning I do a quick pat down to check for essentials: Phone? Check. Wallet? Check. Keys? Check. These three belongings are basic representations of my identity and are woven into my daily activities. But what happens when I go through the check-down process and find one of my essential items is missing? I’m overcome with an immediate sense of dread, followed by a tremendous sense of urgency to recover or replace what I lost.

Security architect have a wealth of experience with identity management — but can they take what they have learned with employees and apply it to the burgeoning customer identity market? While some say consumer IAM is different from that used by employees, with some changes it can be adapted to used for customers as well.

Biometric technologies are being used for a variety of purposes but one aspect is often forgotten. Biometric devices currently lack sufficient, and valuable, feedback to the user of the system. The User Interface/User Experience aspect has historically been neglected and as a result, the systems do not realize the true potential offered by the underlying technology.

As billions of new devices join the Internet of Things, keeping customer data secure becomes both more critical and more difficult. To meet the challenge, it is essential to view security as identity-centric. Roles change as an employee or customer moves throughout an organization and it’s important to maintain a single identity for an individual to ensure a foundation, through correct access and authorization management, that can support robust security.

Incidences of fake driver’s licenses in the U.S. and reports by China’s state run Xinhua news agency that 40% of items sold online in China are either counterfeit or of bad quality, reiterate that the battle to beat the criminals, particular those involved in ID counterfeiting, remains to be won. Holograms continue to be a tried and true method to protect passports, driver licenses and national ID cards.

The risk of breach, theft and loss increases as the number of people within an organization that have access to data grows. Scoped access helps mitigate this risk by ensuring that individuals have access to only specific pieces of data that are required to perform their job. While scoped access has become an accepted approach in employee identity and access management systems, it is also essential to strong customer identity and access management solutions.

Enterprises spanning the globe are looking for the right multi-factor authentication solution and PIV might be the right one for many organizations. PIV multi-factor identity authentication with photo, fingerprints and a PIN, representing an effective way of addressing security vulnerabilities both online and on-premise.

Biometric entry and exit has its challenges and the U.S. is behind other countries when it comes to implementing this security technology. Global terrorism and a fluid migrant situation across Europe and the Americas emphasize the need to know who is coming into and out of the country. But after more than a decade of trying, the U.S. government is still working on deploying a complete biometric entry and exit program.