Cross Match Holdings and DigitalPersona announced a definitive merger agreement that will combine the two companies. GCR Inc. has introduced “AirportIQ Secure Credentials,” a biometric security and continuous credentialing solution for the aviation and airport industry.

The NFC Forum has released nine new technical specifications that aim to deliver greater interoperability, faster read and write performance, mediated handover, and lower power consumption, as well as additional functionality. The Datacard Group has unveiled a new verification module that makes sure unique identifiers are in the correct place.

The Amazon’s most precious resource may be wood and illegal logging operations are threatening it. To protect this natural resource Gemalto teamed with Cargo Tracck and is using machine-to-machine technology to prevent these operations. Trees are tagged with chips that use cellular communications to notify law enforcement officials of illegal logging.

Enterprises aren’t nearly as far along with identity and access management systems as one would think. Wisegate surveyed IAM professionals on the status of their projects and found that progress still has to be made with single sign-on, role-based access and federation.

News briefs of the week. FIME launches NFC validation tool; Bell ID tapped for Canadian TSM project, Frontech North America Inc. unveils palm vein for physical access control; AGNITiO boosts voice ant-spoofing measures; and Kaba releases dual credential locks.

Entrust wants to simplify identity management by taking it to the cloud with its IdentityGuard Cloud Services. This new system is designed to consolidate the management of digital identities, SSL certificates and credentials to a single solution platform.

HID Global surveyed 600 users and found that enterprises are not upgrading physical access control systems or conducting threat assessments. With security threats ever increasing enterprises need to take the appropriate steps to secure systems and prevent costly breaches.