Tractica examines the iris biometric market and its growth; NEC Corp. selected by the Brazilian National Tax Collection Agency to provide NeoFace Watch facial recognition technology for 14 international airports throughout Brazil; the FIDO Alliance entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Bluetooth Special Interest Group to use Bluetooth Smart as an alternative to a USB dongle for authentication.

More than half of U.S. businesses have suffered some sort of breach and these hacks can cost millions of dollars in damages, according to survey results from Centrify Corp. At the center of protecting IT resources is identity, according to findings from Centrify’s “State of the Corporate Perimeter” survey of more than 400 US and UK IT decision makers.

Gemalto providing the California DMV with Coesys Document Verification software solution; ImageWare Systems inks agreement with OnlineAuction.com to provide mobile biometric security software; Gallagher unveiled its latest products; Versasec announced its latest updates to its smart card management systems; GlobalPlatform publishes TEE white paper.

Jeremy Grant, former senior executive advisor for the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace, has joined the Chertoff Group, a risk management and merger and acquisition advisory services as a managing director.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees are finding assistance – and something unexpected – in safe camps around the world: a biometric identity they can use long after they move on. These permanent biometric records are being created by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, better known as the UN Refugee Agency.

Recorded Future found login credentials connected to 47 United States government agencies freely available on the Web. While these passwords can’t necessarily be used to access government systems — with password reuse a rampant problem — it’s a troubling statistic that could lead to misuse of government systems.

A major stumbling block in using high-assurance credentials is getting them into the hands of consumers. Enter step-up authentication, a system that takes a credential that a consumer already has and add higher-levels of assurance to it.