There is no Internet driver license or passport and identifying individuals online is cumbersome. This could be starting to change though. A number of projects are making real strides to enable individuals to use documents they already have for high-assurance access, in essence using IDs already in the wallet as the DNA for future identity.

U.S. citizens and some first-time Visa Waiver Program travelers coming into John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York may have their photo automatically checked against the photo stored on their electronic passport.

Finland taps Gemalto for ePassports and announces certification of Quebec facility; ASSA ABLOY Hospitality Mobile Access has been implemented on more than 100,000 guest rooms worldwide; The FIDO Alliance announced that more than 100 solutions are now FIDO Certified; Swivel Secure, a provider of adaptive multi-factor authentication, announced the launch of Swivel Cloud.

The death of the password has been a long time coming but sadly the authentication mechanism lingers like the smell of weeks old Chinese food forgotten in the back of the refrigerator. Forrester Research is releasing a series of reports that will help security and risk professionals to compare employee password policies against a range of other organizations and assess emerging trends that enterprises are considering to reduce the cost of managing passwords.

Even with people continually being told they shouldn’t use weak passwords it’s still happening, according to SplashData and the 2015 edition of its annual “Worst Passwords List.” The news, however, isn’t entirely bad. In the fifth annual report, compiled from more than 2 million leaked passwords during the year, some new and longer passwords made their debut, which may be a sign that websites and consumers are attempting to be more secure.

As credential issuers want to get a longer lifespan out of the documents card durability is becoming an important factor when choosing new materials. Federal and state agencies, as well as other high-value issuers, want to get as much out of a document as possible, and a 10-year lifespan seems the ultimate objective. To achieve this issuers are moving away from 100% PVC cards – the cheapest and most common type – to composite cards made up of a variety of materials, often including polyesters, polycarbonate or Teslin substrate.

Patricia Wolfhope joined the biometrics industry after her then 7-year-old daughter was almost abducted. At that time she was working at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency and was shocked that law enforcement wasn’t taking advantage of the different technologies available to catch perpetrators.

It’s been more than 10-years since REAL ID was passed into law and states are still working towards compliance. Reports early this year had some states’ citizens having to get other forms of identification to get on a plane, but Homeland Security has granted another extension and states have two more years to whip their processes and documents into shape.

Morpho announced that the FBI has certified the MorphoWave Desktop contactless fingerprint scanner; Global government biometrics spending is predicted to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 22.34% between 2014-2019; EyeVerify ended 2015 with 2 million unique enrolled devices.

The Smart Card Alliance released a white paper looking at non-payment use cases for near field communications technology. While the different payment schemes from Apple, Samsung and Google might receive all the attention there are numerous other applications for the communications protocol.