ACADEMIA

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) today announced more than $9 million in grant awards to support the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC). Five U.S. organizations will pilot identity solutions that increase confidence in online transactions, prevent identity theft, and provide individuals with more control over how they share their personal information.

NSTIC is a White House initiative to work collaboratively with the private sector, advocacy groups and public-sector agencies. The selected pilot proposals advance the NSTIC vision that individuals and organizations adopt secure, efficient, easy-to-use, and interoperable identity credentials to access online services in a way that promotes confidence, privacy, choice and innovation.

“Increasing confidence in online transactions fosters innovation and economic growth,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Standards and Technology and NIST Director Patrick Gallagher. “These investments in the development of identity solutions will help protect our citizens from identity theft and other types of fraud, while helping our businesses, especially small businesses, reduce their costs.”

NSTIC envisions an “Identity Ecosystem” in which technologies, policies and consensus-based standards support greater trust and security when individuals, businesses and other organizations conduct sensitive transactions online.

The pilots span multiple sectors, including health care, online media, retail, banking, higher education, and state and local government and will test and demonstrate new solutions, models or frameworks that do not exist in the marketplace today.

“These five pilots take the vision and principles embodied in the NSTIC and translate them directly into solutions that will be deployed into the marketplace,” said Jeremy Grant, senior executive advisor for identity management and head of the NSTIC National Program Office, which is led by NIST. “By clearly aligning with core NSTIC guiding principles and directly addressing known barriers to the adoption of the Identity Ecosystem, the pilot projects will both promote innovation in online identity management and inform the important work of the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group.”

Launched in August 2012, the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group (IDESG) includes volunteer companies, organizations and individuals dedicated to promoting the creation of standards and policies that will accelerate the development and adoption of the Identity Ecosystem. NSTIC’s National Program Office provided approximately $2.5 million in funding for a secretariat to support and facilitate the work of the IDESG. The group will hold its second plenary meeting Oct. 29-30, 2012, in Dulles, Va.

The grantees of the pilot awards are:

• The American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators (AAMVA) (Va.): $1,621,803 AAMVA will lead a consortium of private industry and government partners to implement and pilot the Cross Sector Digital Identity Initiative (CSDII). The goal of this initiative is to produce a secure online identity ecosystem that will lead to safer transactions by enhancing privacy and reducing the risk of fraud in online commerce. In addition to AAMVA, the CSDII pilot participants include the Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles, Biometric Signature ID, CA Technologies, Microsoft and AT&T.
• Criterion Systems (Va.): $1,977,732 The Criterion pilot will allow consumers to selectively share shopping and other preferences and information to both reduce fraud and enhance the user experience. It will enable convenient, secure and privacy-enhancing online transactions for consumers, including access to Web services from leading identity service providers; seller login to online auction services; access to financial services at Broadridge; improved supply chain management at General Electric; and first-response management at various government agencies and health care service providers. The Criterion team includes ID/DataWeb, AOL Corp., LexisNexis, Risk Solutions, Experian, Ping Identity Corp., CA Technologies, PacificEast, Wave Systems Corp., Internet2 Consortium/In-Common Federation, and Fixmo Inc.
• Daon, Inc. (Va.): $1,821,520 The Daon pilot will demonstrate how senior citizens and all consumers can benefit from a digitally connected, consumer friendly Identity Ecosystem that enables consistent, trusted interactions with multiple parties online that will reduce fraud and enhance privacy. The pilot will employ user-friendly identity solutions that leverage smart mobile devices (smartphones/tablets) to maximize consumer choice and usability. Pilot team members include AARP, PayPal, Purdue University, and the American Association of Airport Executives.
• Resilient Network Systems, Inc. (Calif.): $1,999,371 The Resilient pilot seeks to demonstrate that sensitive health and education transactions on the Internet can earn patient and parent trust by using a Trust Network built around privacy-enhancing encryption technology to provide secure, multifactor, on-demand identity proofing and authentication across multiple sectors. Resilient will partner with the American Medical Association, Aetna, the American College of Cardiology, ActiveHealth Management, Medicity, LexisNexis, NaviNet, the San Diego Beacon eHealth Community, Gorge Health Connect, the Kantara Initiative, and the National eHealth Collaborative.

In the education sector, Resilient will demonstrate secure Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)-compliant access to online learning for children. Resilient will partner with the National Laboratory for Education Transformation, LexisNexis, Neustar, Knowledge Factor, Authentify Inc., Riverside Unified School District, Santa Cruz County Office of Education, and the Kantara Initiative to provide secure, but privacy-enhancing verification of children, parents, teachers and staff, as well as verification of parent-child relationships.

• University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID) (Mich.): $1,840,263 UCAID, known publicly as Internet2, intends to build a consistent and robust privacy infrastructure through common attributes; user-effective privacy managers; anonymous credentials; and Internet2's InCommon Identity Federation service; and to encourage the use of multifactor authentication and other technologies. Internet2's partners include the Carnegie Mellon and Brown University computer science departments, University of Texas, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Utah. The intent is for the research and education community to create tools to help individuals preserve privacy and a scalable privacy infrastructure that can serve a broader community, and add value to the nation's identity ecosystem.