Feds Start Small on Smart IDs

jcatcw writes "Some government employees will be getting smart ID cards beginning this week. The unfunded mandate to have all employees and contractors use Personal Identity Verification (PIV) cards is part of Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12. The U.S. General Services Administration is providing enrollment centers that can verify the identities of employees, fingerprint and photograph the workers, and issue PIV cards to them. The deadline for getting cards to all employees and contractors is the end of September 2008."

Comments

I've had mine for a year

[superid]

I'm DoD and got my mandated Common Access Card over a year ago. We PKI enabled almost everything. Besides a few inevitable rollout inconveniences (ran out of blanks once, way more people forgot their PINs than they expected, end user training and confusion) it was actually a VERY smooth transition. I'm glad they did it, I honestly think we are more secure because of it (server side, not client side)

Re:So what?

[rts008]

Step by step is how it happens- so subtle you don't even realise until it's too late.

It's starting to get late, heading towards too late soon.

The right solution for the wrong problem

[thesandbender]

I've worked as a contractor for the Federal Government and the City of New York (which considers themselves a Federal Government). Most of the agencies I worked at had security that was an absolute joke. I'll give the guys at the DoE/Forrestal Building some credit as well as the Department of Juvenile Justice in NYC , they actually asked questions and took their jobs seriously. (The DoJJ guys in New York are the only ones who have flat-out denied me entry... no matter how much smooth talking I did. For whatever reason, the guards I came across took protecting the identities and lives of the children in overseen by the agency very, very seriously and I have the utmost respect for them because of it.) Most of the other security guards were too concerned about talking about the caboose of the last woman to walk through the metal detector.

The point is, no amount of technological or physical security is going to do any good if the people entrusted with its implementation are not trained to do their job properly or take it seriously. The only "serious" contracts I worked were at DoE but at the rest of the agencies I had access to enough information to financially ruin a good number of the people in the United States. Thankfully I worked with people who took that responsibility as seriously as I did but I can't help but feel that was through luck of the draw and not the success of the system.

Smartcards/RFID make sense if they going to be used and implemented properly (e.g. you picture is on the card and encrypted with a public key system so that the agency can verify that it's authentic and not a clever forgery... and the people at the desk care enough to actually check)... otherwise it's just another way for contractors/etc to make money and a waste of everyone else's time. /looking for the black helicopters

The Actual Program Information (imagine that)

[dnadig]

In case anyone cares to actually LEARN what it is rather than just ramble on about how horrible the world is:

http://csrc.nist.gov/piv-program/index.html

It's a very sensible document (and HSPD12 is just the mandate, FIPS201 is the implementation). All it does (ALL) is say "agencies need to have a process in place to make sure Joe is Joe, and they need to give him a card that says he's Joe, and it needs to look like this."

It doesn't actually go further than that. It outlines an interoperable infrastructure based on dirt simple, well understood, highly tested smart card stock, lays out minimum requirements for readers, and puts a system certification process in place. The "tech" part of this is really quite simple and boring for anyone who's spent more than 10 minutes thinking about PKI or smartcards.

The much much more important part of this is the credentialling part (PIV-1) which has been in place for a year. This establishes clear lines of responsibility and clear processes for actually establishing that Joe is Joe, and at least an attempt to make sure that, say, the Defense Manpower Data Center is using the same process as the Janitor's closet in the Department of Education. This is a GOOD THING people. It's about breaking down silos and creating (gasp) an open standard for strong(er) authentication.

That's right folks, an open interoperability standard sponsored by the US of A. Wanna make sure your corporate ID is just a wee bit futureproof? Read the FIPS201 docs and mimic the data model and tech requirements.

OK, back to the sarcasm laced punditry. Thank's for playing.