NIST announces latest funding for trusted identities
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The National Institute of Standards and Technology has awarded $3.7 million in grants to three companies to make online transactions more secure and private.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is awarding $3.7 million to support three pilot programs that aim to make online transactions for healthcare, government services, transportation and the Internet of Things (IoT) more secure and private.
According to NIST's announcement, the National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) grants -- which go to MorphoTrust USA, HealthIDx and Galois -- will help create solutions aimed at reducing tax refund theft, improving the security of medical information and providing secure online data storage.
MorphoTrust will receive just over $1 million to focus on the prevention of the theft of personal state tax refunds. Through its partnerships with multiple states, MorphoTrust will demonstrate how to leverage trust produced through the online driver licensing process – including enrollment, verification, authentication and validation – to create trustworthy electronic IDs that use biometric information.
Galois will receive $1.85 million to develop a system that uses biometric-based authentication to allow users to store and share private information online. Galois also will work with partners to develop transit ticketing on smartphones and to integrate the secure system into an IoT-enabled smart home.
HealthIDx will receive a bit more than $800,000 to develop technology that protects patients’ privacy and information. The technology will be set up so that medical service providers have no knowledge of which credential service provider an end user chooses, credential service providers have no knowledge of which medical service provider the end user is visiting and the identity broker has no knowledge about the transaction’s parties or contents.
This is the fourth round of grants given to support the NSTIC effort, which was launched in 2011 by the Obama administration to encourage secure, efficient, easy-to-use and interoperable identity credentials for online use.
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