The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) last week said it plans to award up to $10 million this year for a number of pilot projects under a White House initiative to boost the wider use of identity solutions in the marketplace.
The NIST national program office for the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) expects this summer to award between five to eight contracts for pilot projects that would last up to two years and receive between $1.3 million and $2 million per year each.
A Federal Funding Opportunity was released last week for the pilot projects and initial proposals are due by March 7. Finalists will be selected by March 22 with final proposals due by April 23. Awards are expected by July.
The White House last April released the NSTIC, which outlines a framework for public and private sector cooperation to develop technologies, standards and policies as part of an “identity ecosystem” that will enable trust, security and privacy in online services and transactions (Defense Daily, April 18, 2011).
The NSTIC is meant to address three major challenges in cyber space. One is overcoming a lack of confidence that people, organizations and businesses are who they say they are, which limits the introduction of many online services.
A second is that currently people maintain quite a number of usernames and passwords, a burden that leads to password reuse, which is itself a vulnerability that makes fraud and identity theft easier.
Third is overcoming privacy challenges related to the improper or illegal release of sensitive information about people.
Proposals sought by NIST could include technologies or approaches that provide incentives to use trusted authentication methods rather than usernames and passwords, the creation of identity hubs to quickly validate credentials, better ways of enhancing consumer privacy while meeting business and security needs, and demonstrate interoperability across various authentication methods such as smart cards, one-time passwords or digital certificates.
An NSTIC Proposers’ Conference will be held on Feb. 15 in Washington, D.C., at the Department of Commerce. NIST is part of Commerce.