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3.3.3.3 Selecting Initial FAL

NIST PIV and digital identity SP 800-63-4 against SP 800-63-3
All changes in this version
added 3 Digital Identity Risk Management part of 3.3.3

Title changed

Before · SP 800-63-3

After · SP 800-63-4

Selecting Initial FAL

Control changed

Before · SP 800-63-3

After · SP 800-63-4

Identity federation brings many benefits, including a convenient customer experience that avoids redundant, costly, and often time-consuming identity processes. The benefits of federation through a general-purpose IdP model or a subscriber-controlled wallet model are covered in Sec. 5 of [SP800-63C] . However, not all online services will be able to make use of federation, whether for risk-based reasons or due to legal or regulatory requirements. Consistent with [M-19-17] , federal agencies that operate online services SHOULD implement federation as an option for user access. If the online service implements identity federation, an initial FAL is selected through a simple mapping process:

• Low impact: FAL1
• Moderate impact: FAL2
• High impact: FAL2 or FAL3

The organization SHALL document whether federation will be used for their online service and, if it is, SHALL select an initial FAL for each user group based on the effective impact level determination from Sec. 3.2.4 .

For online services that are assessed to be high impact, organizations SHALL conduct a further assessment to evaluate the risk of a compromised IdP to determine whether FAL2 or FAL3 is more appropriate for their use case. Considerations SHOULD include the type of data being accessed, the location of the IdP (e.g., whether the IdP is internal or external to their enterprise boundary), and the availability of bound authenticators or holder-of-key capabilities.

The FAL reflects the level of assurance in identity assertions that convey the results of authentication processes and relevant identity information to RP online services. The preliminary selection assumes that higher potential impacts of failures in federated identity architectures should be mitigated by higher assurance processes.