TAMPA, Fla.—The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) on Sept. 17 awarded $2.9 million in grants to three entities for additional pilot projects in support of an ongoing public-private partnership aimed at seeding the marketplace with solutions and standards for boosting online security and privacy.
Confyrm received $1.2 million, Safran Group’s MorphoTrust USA unit $823,235 and GSMA $821,948 under the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) program that was launched by the Obama administration in 2011 and is managed by NIST.iStock Cyber Lock
As more data is put online for work, services and personal reasons, and in turn is “collected and bought and sold, swapped and analyzed, there’s a trust gap that is starting to emerge online where people are feeling less in control of these systems. They’re feeling like they can’t trust it and one of the big concerns is if we can’t actually inspire trust and confidence in solutions we’re going to be heading into an unpleasant place within a few years,” Jeremy Grant, head of the NSTIC National Program Office, said at the Global Identity Summit presented by AFCEA and the Biometric Consortium.
The awards, the third round of grants in the past two years, will “help catalyze the marketplace” to give people options other than passwords to conduct online transactions more securely while also safeguarding privacy, Grant said. In addition, the pilots will provide experiences and insight for a private-sector led group called the Identity Ecosystem Steering Group that is helping coordinate the development of standards to enable more secure and easy ways to increase the confidence of people and organizations in their online experiences.
Confyrm, which is based in Britain, is focused on strengthening trust in digital identities. Under the NSTIC grant, the company will work with a major Internet email provider, a mobile operator and multiple e-commerce sites to demonstrate ways to minimize loss by providing early fraud detection and notification when criminals create fake accounts or take over online accounts, NIST said.
GSMA, a London-based association representing mobile device and software makers, has partnered with the America’s four major mobile network operators to test a common approach that allows consumers and businesses to use mobile devices for secure, privacy-enhancing identity and access management. NIST said that allowing any organization to easily accept identity solutions from any of the four operators will reduce a significant barrier to online service providers accepting mobile-based credentials.
MorphoTrust USA is partnering with North Carolina’s Departments of Transportation and Health and Human Services to demonstrate how state issued credentials like a driver’s license can also be used in online situations for citizen services. The solution will eliminate the need for people to appear in person to apply for benefits under the state’s Food and Nutrition Services program.