HID Global has issued its top five trends anticipated for 2018, with mobile, cloud, and Internet of Things technologies continuing to advance change.

One trend that already appears to be well underway is “Organizations embracing the benefits of the cloud”. With Acuity Market Intelligence having recently predicted massive growth in cloud-based biometric transactions, and Entrust Datacard having just joined the Cloud Security Alliance, it’s clear that others in the digital identity industry are also anticipating considerable rates of adoption for cloud services in the year to come.

Meanwhile, with advanced authentication systems including biometric identification now available across a wide range of mobile devices, HID Global is predicting that 2018 will be the year that “Mobile access reaches [the] tipping point for mass adoption”. And along with that trend, as Apple’s support for NFC reading on iOS drives the emergence of more IoT-based applications, and as digital certificate solutions become “a core component for adding trust” in the Internet of Things, HID Global is also predicting an intensifying focus on bringing security to the Internet of Things.

Other important predictions include a bigger role for risk-based security through data analytics, and a convergence of physical and digital identity into a single user credential, with the government, finance, and energy sectors leading the charge in the latter. HID Global’s predictions can be read in further detail on the company’s website.