The U.S. Department of Commerce last year announced three pilots in support of the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC). The $3 million in grants will be shared among the three recipients – MorphoTrust, Confyrm and GSMA – as they pilot solutions exploring mobile devices instead of passwords for online authentication, minimization of loss from ID theft and improved access to state services.

Insurance and banking provider USAA is rolling out biometric authentication on its mobile app and the financial services company says face and voice recognition capability should be available nationwide to all of its 10.6 million customers in the coming weeks.

As biometric solutions become more mainstream, so do worries about privacy and security. Analyst Alan Goode of Goode Intelligence looks at the growing concerns surrounding the expansion of biometrics into consumer digital services.

EU payment providers need to provide consumers with two-factor authentication for access to banks account by the end of summer.

Descartes Biometrics takes its ear authentication technology to the next level with HELIX, an app that uses a smartphone’s front facing camera and the user’s unique ear features for authentication.

USAA is enabling customers to enroll biometrics so they can use either facial recognition or voice to access account information on mobile devices.

2014: the year of password breaches, Internet of Things and biometric handsets. True, some of these started earlier, but this year saw these technologies blossom and breaches widen. These are three separate things right now, but they lead up to one thing: the mobile handset as an identifier.

Consumer and personal identities are tied to mobile phones. Although most of us recognize that mobile phones are not the most secure way to exchange information and access content, the convenience factor reigns supreme. Efforts are underway, however, to make the mobile the best and most secure way to communicate identity.

In order to predict what will happen with the future of digital identity, Alan Goode also looks at the past to try and predict how consumers will be accessing online services in the future.

When it comes to cool new biometric modalities, heartbeat and the Nymi definitely have the cool factor. But a Washington Post story pitting it against fingerprint for modality of the future is a little far fetched as there won’t just be one authenticator of the future.