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In Senate hearings regarding the recent breach of the Get Transcript system last week, IRS officials said they were \"reviewing options\" to make their online services more secure. They did not mention the agency already has asked vendors for bids on a wide array of new authentication services.
A recent cyber breach leaves the Internal Revenue Service with more questions than answers about its online authentication system. But the IRS knows the data systems it built decades ago aren\'t useful any more. Visitors to the agency\'s Get Transcript portal are easy targets, because hackers already knew the answers to many of the knowledge based authentication questions they answered to enter the portal. Jeremy Grant, an identity management consultant and former senior executive advisor for identity management at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, tells In Depth with Francis Rose about what lessons government learn about identity management.
Jeremy Grant has led the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) program since 2011. His last day will be in April.
The General Services Administration launched the Connect.gov portal in November and awarded two vendors contracts to provide secure electronic credentials. VA and USDA are among the first agencies to put applications on the cloud credential exchange. USPS is developing the technology infrastructure to allow this shared service to happen.
You might be a dog on the Internet, but nobody can tell for sure. Confidence in who people say they are online is vital to a cyber secure future for government and industry. People at the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace have been working on this problem within the Commerce Department for a couple of years now. Jeremy Grant is senior executive advisor for Identity Management at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He joined Tom Temin on the Federal Drive to discuss some recent progress.
The Homeland Security Department upgraded its Homeland Security Information Network (HSIN) last year with new security and identity management features. The growing acceptance and use of standards is making it easier for state, local, tribal government and other partners to securely access law enforcement data.
Employees at the departments of Treasury, Homeland Security and State can use their HSPD-12 smart cards to log onto the intelligence community's unclassified sharing platform. Most recently, the departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs and the Justice Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will have access to the tools and applications through their smart identity cards.
Through the back-end attribute exchange, agencies can have a standard way for different organizations to safely and securely share sensitive information. The Justice Department conducted a pilot earlier this year and found success with state and local law enforcement agencies accessing the Regional Information Sharing System.
As the Defense Department builds out a technology infrastructure that's designed to be the latest generation of commercial mobile devices into users' hands, it's still unsure how to meet a key security requirement: identity management systems that comply with the military's existing requirements for secure user authentication.
The Postal Service will kick off its pilot to provide identity management services in the cloud in early 2014. The IRS and DHS also are pursuing complimentary initiatives to authorize and authenticate users.
SecureKey Technologies will build a portal in the cloud to handle the identity management process and connect one username or password or digital certificate to many services. The contract is worth $15.1 million over three years.
News and buzz in the acquisition and IT communities that you may have missed this week.
The Homeland Security Department released a draft performance work statement to vendors. The draft PWS details DHS' needs to use HSPD-12 cards for computer network and building access.
Phillip Soloweszyk, director of Identity and Windows Consulting Services for Quest Software, will discuss identity management. APril 16, 2013