The World Wide Web Consortium announced new Web Authentication work based upon the member submission of FIDO 2.0 Web APIs from the FIDO Alliance; Zwipe released Zwipe ID, a card with fingerprint authentication capabilities targeted for the physical access control market; Synaptics announced a smaller fingerprint sensor.

Back in the day it was either contact or contactless interface for smart cards, choose one. But then came hybrid cards which offered both interfaces by embedding two separate chips on a single card. Today, however, demand is growing in multiple markets for dual-interface cards that offer both contact and contactless interfaces via a single chip.

The underlying technology behind contactless smart cards hasn’t changed, but that does not mean manufacturers or their offerings have stagnated. Two of the biggest changes in contactless smart card technology are the speed of the chips and the memory capacity.

EveryKey, a device that can enable access to mobile devices, laptops and even a car or home, zoomed to 676% of its crowd funding target on IndieGogo earlier this month. The product also has a recognized name backing it, John McAfee, the guy who founded a wildly successful anti-virus company and is now running for U.S. president as a Libertarian Party candidate. McAfee is now EveryKey chief evangelist and talked with Re:ID’s Gina Jordan about the system.

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.

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.

The Internet of Things (IoT) promises new opportunities for consumers and businesses to improve productivity and quality of life. At the same time, the IoT opens the door to new threats to information privacy. The vision for the information superhighway has come true, but sadly it’s creating a number of new IoT-related on-ramps that cybercriminals can use.