Guidelines for the Accreditation of Personal Identity Verification Card Issuers

摘要

The purpose of this SP is to provide appropriate and useful guidelines for accrediting the reliability of issuers of Personal Identity Verification cards that are established to collect, store, and disseminate personal identity credentials and issue smart cards, based on the standards published in response to HSPD-12. These issuers, who are the target of assessment and accreditation, are called Personal Identity Verification Card Issuers or PCIs. The reliability of PCIs is of utmost importance when one organization (e.g., a Federal agency or Federal contractor) is required to trust the identity credentials and cards of individuals that were created and issued, respectively, by another organization. This trust will only exist if organizations relying on the credentials and cards issued by a given organization have the necessary level of assurance that the reliability of the issuing organization has been established through a formal accreditation process. This SP provides an assessment and accreditation methodology for verifying that issuers of PIV credentials and cards are reliably adhering to standards and implementation directives developed under HSPD-12.