- Value [1] Security and Resiliency
- Identity Solutions will be Secure and Resilient - Securing identity solutions against attack or misuse is paramount. Security
ensures the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of identity solutions. Strong cryptography, the use of open and well-vetted
security standards, and the presence of auditable security processes are critical to the trustworthiness of an identity solution.
Identity solutions should have security built into them such that they detect and prevent intrusions, corruption, and disruption
to the maximum extent possible. Identity solutions should be resilient, able to recover and adapt to drastic or abrupt change.
They should be capable of timely restoration after disruption occurs and should adapt to the dynamic nature of technology.
Tolerance to loss, compromise, or theft is crucial for maintaining services during and after disruption. Security infrastructure
should prevent unauthorized transactions by authorized individuals/entities. The ability to support robust forensic capabilities
maximizes recovery efforts and provides a valuable opportunity to apply lessons learned to future enhancements.
- Value [2] Interoperability
- Identity Solutions will be Interoperable - Interoperability encourages service providers to accept a variety of credential
and identity media, similar to the way ATMs accept credit and debit cards from different banks. Interoperability supports
identity portability by allowing individuals to use a variety of credentials in asserting their digital identities to various
service providers. This principle recognizes two interoperability ideals within the Identity Ecosystem: 1. There will be standardized,
reliable credentials and identity media in widespread use; and 2. If an individual, device, or software presents a valid and
appropriate credential, any qualified relying party could accept the credential as proof of identity and attributes. To achieve
these ideals, identity solutions should be scalable across multiple federations, spanning traditional geographic borders.
An identity federation allows an organization to accept and trust external users authenticated by a third party. Within the
Identity Ecosystem, individuals will have the capability to conduct online transactions seamlessly across numerous service
providers and identity federations. Identity solutions achieve scalability when all participants in the various federations
agree upon a common set of standards, requirements, and enforcement mechanisms for securely exchanging digital identity information,
resulting in authentication across federations. There are three types of interoperability requirements for identity solutions:
* Technical Interoperability – The ability for different technologies to communicate and exchange data based upon well defined
and widely adopted interface standards. * Semantic Interoperability – The ability of each end-point to communicate data and
have the receiving party understand the message in the sense intended by the sending party. * Policy Interoperability – Common
business policies and processes (e.g., identity proofing and vetting) related to the transmission, receipt, and acceptance
of data between systems, which a legal framework supports. Lastly, the Identity Ecosystem will encourage identity solutions
to utilize non-proprietary standards to help ensure interoperability. In addition, identity solutions will be modular, allowing
service providers to build sophisticated identity systems using smaller and simpler sub-systems. This improves the flexibility,
reliability, and reuse of these systems, and allows for simplicity and efficiency in change management as service providers
can add and remove components without requiring wholesale updates.
- Value [3] Privacy and Noncoersion
- Identity Solutions will be Privacy Enhancing and Voluntary for the Public There are practical barriers in place that preserve
individual privacy in the offline world. For example, an individual can utilize a driver’s license to open a bank account,
get onto an airplane, or get into an age-restricted movie. The Department of Motor Vehicles does not know all the places that
service providers accept driver’s licenses as identification. It is also difficult for the bank, the airport, and the movie
theater to get together and link the transactions together. At the same time, there are aspects of these offline transactions
that are not privacy-protective. The movie theater attendant that checks the driver’s license only needs to know that the
individual is over age 18. However, the driver’s license reveals unnecessary information, such as address and actual date
of birth, when the individual provides it for age verification. Ideally, identity solutions should preserve the positive privacy
benefits of offline transactions, while mitigating some of the negative privacy aspects. The eight Fair Information Practice
Principles (FIPPs)7 — Transparency, Individual Participation, Purpose Specification, Data Minimization, Use Limitation, Data
Quality and Integrity, Security, and Accountability and Auditing — are the widely accepted framework for evaluating and mitigating
privacy impacts. Universal and integrated adoption of the FIPPs in the Identity Ecosystem should enable individuals to understand
and make meaningful choices about the use of their personal information in cyberspace. Adoption of the FIPPs should also ensure
that organizations limit data collection, only use and distribute information that is relevant and necessary, maintain appropriate
safeguards on that information, and are responsive and accountable to individuals’ privacy expectations. Fully integrating
all of the FIPPs into the Identity Ecosystem will be the key to achieving trusted identities in cyberspace that are truly
privacy enhancing. For example, many privacy approaches focus on the principles of Transparency and Individual Participation,
which include the provision of privacy notices and individual privacy choices. However, if such approaches fail to incorporate
the other FIPPs, the entire burden of implementing privacy protections is on the individual. Alternatively, an Identity Ecosystem
grounded in a more holistic adoption of the FIPPs provides multi-faceted privacy protections. It includes, for example, the
creation and adoption of privacy-enhancing technical standards that allow individuals to transmit the minimum amount of information
necessary to the transaction. Such policies and standards would also minimize the linkage of credential use among and between
service providers. In circumstances where individuals make choices regarding the use of their data (such as to restrict particular
uses), those choices are communicated to and implemented by all subsequent data holders. In addition, the Identity Ecosystem
includes limits on the length of time organizations can retain personal information and requires such organizations to provide
individuals with appropriate opportunities to access, correct, and delete it. The Identity Ecosystem also requires organizations
to maintain auditable records regarding the use and protection of personal information and compliance with applicable standards,
law, and policies. Voluntary participation is another critical element of this Strategy. Engaging in online transactions should
be voluntary to both organizations and individuals. The Federal Government will not require organizations to adopt specific
identity solutions or to provide online services, nor require individuals to obtain high-assurance digital credentials if
they do not want to engage in high-risk online transactions with the government or otherwise. The Identity Ecosystem should
encompass a range of transactions from anonymous to high assurance. Thus, the Identity Ecosystem should allow an individual
to select the credential he or she deems most appropriate for the transaction, provided the credential meets the risk requirements
of the relying party.
- Value [4] Cost-Effectiveness and Ease of Use
- Identity Solutions will be Cost-Effective and Easy To Use From the individual’s perspective, the increasing complexity and
risk of managing multiple credentials threaten the convenience associated with online transactions. The number and diversity
of service providers requires individuals to have multiple usernames and passwords, generally one for each provider. Many
require complex and frequent password changes, a burden for both the service provider and the individual. This also imparts
an increased risk of account compromise through insecure user management of account credentials and an increased likelihood
of account abandonment. The Identity Ecosystem must address this complexity as well as the underlying security vulnerabilities
created by it. The Identity Ecosystem will promote federated identity solutions and foster the reduction and elimination of
silos that require individuals to maintain multiple identity credentials. Individuals will benefit from the federated identity
solution by establishing a small number of identity credentials that they can leverage across a wide variety of service providers.
Organizational entities will benefit from the federated identity solution through the elimination of locally administered
or application-specific credential issuance and maintenance. Identity solutions can result in efficiencies for all parties
due in part to reduction in fraud, help desk costs, and expensive paper-based processes. Further, identity solutions that
leverage reusable infrastructure promote operational efficiency and further reduce the cost of implementation, thereby increasing
the potential return on investment. Identity solutions should be simple to understand, intuitive, easy to use, and enabled
by technology that requires minimal user training. Service providers should perform usability studies to quantify ease-of-use.
Many existing infrastructure components in use today (e.g., cell phones, smart cards, personal computers) should be leveraged
to facilitate ease-of-use through their wide adoption, accessibility, and availability. Whenever possible, identity solutions
should be “built-in” to the infrastructure to enable usability.
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