Department Of Veterans Affairs Financial Services Center Uses Codebench Software To Validate PIV Cards
Codebench Inc., provider of TWIC/HSPD-12 /FIPS-201 authentication software, announced recently that the Department of Veterans Affairs Financial Services Center in Austin has deployed Codebench’s PIVCheck Plus and Certificate Manager software to check and authenticate Personal Identity Verification cards for employees at its new facility.
The project is considered one of the first of its kind where a government facility is using the full capabilities of the PIV card, which will be required for all U.S. government employees and contractors to gain physical and logical access to secured government buildings and computer resources. The PIV card contains a computer chip enabling the card to receive, store, recall and send information in a secure fashion.
By deploying Codebench’s PIVCheck Plus Software, in conjunction with the Software House C•CURE 800/8000 physical access control system, the VA’s Financial Services Center is using the PIV card as a single card access control solution facility-wide.
Card holders use the PIV ID card to gain access into the building and verify privileges once inside the facility. The Financial Services Center is presently running a pilot on using the PIV card to log onto their computers. Officials expect full implementation of systems access using the PIV card by December.
Codebench’s PIVCheck Plus software has been used to read, validate, authenticate and then register each cardholder’s PIV card into the C•CURE 800/8000 database without any manual data entry.
Codebench’s PIVCheck Certificate Manager is a PC-based application that, after registration, re-validates imported cardholder certificates on a periodic basis. It checks the revocation status of the card, enabling the system to revoke access privileges on the spot.
Systems integrator Tech Systems, Inc. of Duluth, Ga., installed the system for the Veterans Affairs Financial Services Center, a newly built facility that opened in Austin in 2009.
“All of this is blazing a new trail,” said Royce Cox, account manager at Tech Systems’ local Austin office. “We’re one of the few sites in the country using the full capabilities of the PIV card.”
PIVCheck provides strong, three-factor authentication, managing the acquisition of cardholder data from a smart card and performing off-card biometric matching. The software uses an asymmetric key authentication scheme to identify forged or cloned cards. Digital certificates may be verified by querying the issuer's validation authority or an OCSP/SCVP responder.
PIVCheck is FIPS 201-certified in several of the NIST SP 800-116 categories, including PIV Authentication System and Caching Status Proxy.