NIST SP 800-63 Compliance
Digital Identity Guidelines for Secure Access
What is NIST SP 800-63?
NIST Special Publication (SP) 800-63, also known as the Digital Identity Guidelines, defines technical requirements for organizations implementing digital identity services.
It focuses on identity proofing, authentication, and federation, and introduces assurance levels for identity proofing (IAL), authentication (AAL), and federation (FAL) to reduce identity fraud and unauthorized access.
Key NIST SP 800-63 requirements:
- Identity Assurance Levels (IAL): Verify user identity before granting access.
- Authenticator Assurance Levels (AAL): Enforce authentication mechanisms from passwords to MFA.
- Federation Assurance Levels (FAL): Securely manage identity assertions between systems.
- Credential Management: Control issuance, binding, and lifecycle of credentials.
- Session Security: Protect sessions against hijacking and replay attacks.
How Visual Guard facilitates NIST SP 800-63 compliance:
Support for MFA:
Enforce multi-factor authentication methods to comply with AAL2 and AAL3 requirements.
Federated identity integration:
Integrate applications with trusted identity providers using federation standards.
Granular access policies:
Restrict access based on assurance level, role, or contextual conditions.
Credential lifecycle management:
Automate provisioning, updates, and revocation of credentials in line with NIST guidelines.
Secure logging and monitoring:
Record authentication events and generate reports to support compliance audits.
Detailed technical capabilities
Authentication Mechanisms
- Support for OTP, push notifications, biometrics, and hardware tokens
Contextual Access Control
- Conditional access rules based on device, location, or time
Identity Management
- Integration with external identity proofing systems to support IAL requirements
- Secure management of user identities across multiple applications and platforms
Audit & Traceability
- Immutable audit logs of authentication and federation events
Session Security
- Strong session management with timeout and re-authentication policies
Use case
Enabling strong authentication in a government portal
A government agency implementing a digital citizen portal must comply with NIST SP 800-63 by enforcing identity proofing, MFA, and secure federation with other services.
How Visual Guard helped:
- Implemented MFA for all citizen and staff accounts.
- Integrated with identity proofing services to verify users at IAL2.
- Applied conditional access rules for sensitive government records.
- Generated compliance reports for auditors.
Result: The agency delivered a secure digital identity system, reduced fraud risk, and achieved compliance with NIST SP 800-63.