ActivIdentity Announces FIPS 201 ID Solution

Nov. 3, 2006
ActivIdentity card management system now on GSA list

FREMONT, Calif., Nov. 2 -- ActivIdentity Corporation, a global leader in digital identity assurance, today announced that ActivIdentity Card Management System (CMS) 4.0 for PIV has been approved by the General Services Administration (GSA) for Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) 201.

ActivIdentity CMS now joins industry-leading ActivClient smart card middleware on the GSA FIPS 201 approved products list. These complimentary offerings serve the needs of government agencies, contractors and first responders that need to deploy smart employee ID solutions and comply with Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12.

ActivIdentity card management systems offer proven reliability and have issued over 11 million smart cards for US federal employees. Together with over 3 million copies of ActivIdentity client middleware sold for use on federal desktops, this makes ActivIdentity the most broadly used smart employee ID solutions in the US federal government.

The ActivIdentity smart employee ID solution for PIV is based on open standards with APIs that enable customers to integrate with existing and future identity management and physical access control systems. ActivIdentity CMS and ActivClient support a wide variety of environments including certificate authorities, directories, databases, identity management systems, and physical access control systems which reduce the time, risk cost and complexity of deployment. In addition, ActivIdentity CMS 4.0 securely updates and manages smart card applications and content in the field to further extend the capabilities and life of the card.

"Forward-looking government agencies that begin to build their complete identity assurance platform with ActivIdentity's FIPS 201 approved CMS and middleware can take advantage of a two-fold benefit: compliance with the PIV requirements, and the ability to build additional identity and security applications into their infrastructure as they require them," ActivIdentity Senior Vice President of Public Sector Solutions Robert Brandewie said.

"ActivIdentity conscientiously works with government agencies to ensure its identity assurance platform provides them a secure and flexible foundation upon which to continue strengthening and building their personnel identification systems to maximize their return on investment," Brandewie added.

The ActivIdentity smart employee ID solution goes beyond compliance with the PIV interoperability standard by enabling a complete range of solutions that leverage the PIV card and its infrastructure, including strong authentication to networks, workstations and software applications, as well as secure information and transactions with digital signature and encryption. In addition, ActivIdentity CMS and ActivClient are integrated with ActivIdentity SecureLogin(R) SSO to enable the PIV card to secure access to software applications through single sign on.