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HID and consortium partners receive US cyber security grant

HID Global has announced that the company and two consortium partners have received one of four US cyber security grants that were recently awarded through President Obama’s National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) initiative. The grants build on the successful launch of five NSTIC pilots awarded in 2012, and will be used to develop systems that enable mobile phones and wearable mobile devices to carry credentials for identification and verification that improve consumer privacy, security and convenience online.

“We are excited to be chosen to help fulfil the NSTIC guiding principles for creating the next generation of identity protection and verification solutions that enable consumers to transact securely and easily over the Internet,” said Jerome Becquart, vice president of product marketing, identity assurance with HID Global. “Our proposal was selected from a competitive field of more than 70 team- and consortium-based submissions, and we look forward to working alongside Exponent and Gemalto to enable important new solutions that allow mobile phones and wearable devices to be used for online consumer identity and attribute verification.”

The consortium has been named the NSTIC Key Team, and the team’s pilot will be focused on enabling mobile phones and secure wearable devices such as rings or bracelets to be used like smart cards to secure applications and networks for a leading social media company, a health care organisation, and the US Department of Defense. Using these mobile device platforms in government applications will also require the ability to produce and store a token associated with a previously used government credential (known as a derived credential) in the device’s secure element, so as not to leverage the previous face-to-face identity-proofing process.

Exponent will provide overall project management leadership for the Key Team, and HID Global will contribute its expertise in mobile and wearable device authentication, credential provisioning and client middleware. The company’s broad portfolio includes authentication and threat detection services; software for smart cards and tokens for strong authentication in both commercial and military applications, and systems for the secure management of smart cards and smart tokens including credentials provisioned in a mobile secure element.

The NSTIC Key Team’s solutions derive from existing and emerging open standards designed to yield an interoperable system that is widely deployable and conducive to participation by a wide variety of solution providers and relying parties. The team will be supported by the Computer Science Department of one of the Nation’s Leading Universities, and Experian Corp, the leading global information services company.

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