Rising tide: HSPD-12, FIPS 201 approvals• Three CoreStreet OCSP products receive FIPS 201 approval • WidePoint receives GSA HSPD-12 approval for IT Schedule 70, SIN 132-6x series • Probaris SP/PIV wins HSPD-12 approval

Published 20 July 2006

U.S. government departments and agencies and private contractors doing business with them must comply with the HSPD-12-mandated FIPS 201 by 27 October 2006; during the past year many IT companies applied to the GSA to have their products and solutions approved, and the GSA is announcing such approvals at an ever-growing rate

Rising tide: HSPD-12, FIPS 201 approvals

Government agencies and contractors who do business with the government have a deadline of 27 October 2006 to comply with the IT security requirements of HSPD-12-mandated FIPS 201. As the deadline nears, the U.S. Government Services Administration (GSA) is approving more and more products as complying with the mandate’s requirements. These approvals are important because they increase the likelihood that government agencies and contractors doing business with these agencies will purchase these products for their operations. Three examples:

Three CoreStreet OCSP products receive FIPS 201 approval

The U.S. Government Services Administration (GSA) has approved three products of Cambridge, U.K.-based CoreStreet, a developer of software for infrastructure and applications for smart credential programs, as complying with the Federal Information Processing Standard 201 (FIPS 201). The products are the CoreStreet Validation Authority, the CoreStreet Responder Appliance 2400, and the Path Builder System.

As mandated by FIPS 201, Public Key Infrastructures (PKI) must provide Online Certificate Status Protocol (OCSP) for certificate validation, and doing so requires a validation authority and a distributed network of responders. CoreStreet’s Validation Authority is already deployed by the U.S. Department of Defense and other government agencies around the world.

-read more about CoreStreet products at company Web site [http://www.corestreet.com/]

WidePoint receives GSA HSPD-12 approval for IT Schedule 70, SIN 132-6x series

The General Services Administration (GSA) has given Oak Brook Terrace, Illinois-based WidePoint Corporation’s (OTCBB: WDPT), wholly owned subsidiary Operational Research Consultants (ORC), approval to provide federal agencies with complete end-to-end solutions for Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 (HSPD-12). ORC says it is now the first and only company qualified for all three categories within the GSA Information Technology (IT) Schedule 70, Special Item Number (SIN) 132-6x series. ORC is a leading provider of federal public key infrastructure (PKI) and shared services. The SIN 132-6x series designation for ORC provides a contracting vehicle for authentication products and services for purposes of physical and logical access controls, electronic signature, performance of e-business transactions, and delivery of government services.

ORC has also been evaluated and approved to provide integration services for integration of more than one Personal Identity Verification (PIV) service and product, including interfaces between PIV components and with agency PIV systems; turn-key agency-owned integrated PIV solutions, comprising more than one PIV service; and contractor owned and managed service that provides integrated PIV solutions.

-read more in this news release [http://www.hawkassociates.com/widepoint/wdptpr13.php]

Probaris SP/PIV wins HSPD-12 approval

The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has approved Philadelphia, Pennsylvania-based Probaris as a qualified provider for HSPD-12 implementations. Federal agencies are now authorized to buy the company’s SP/PIV, its HSPD-12 software product. Probaris SP/PIV provides a feature-rich business process management (BPM) system and a credential issuance identity management system (IDMS) in a single software platform. The product comes complete with preconfigured processes for credential issuance, reissuance, revocation, and termination. The product enforces separation of roles and provides for automatic generation of unique identification numbers for PIV credentials, making it suitable for HSPD-12 and e-Authentication requirements. Note that Probaris’ SP/PIV includes a central data repository and a web services infrastructure. This architecture enables SP/PIV to serve as the integration hub for the complete set of technology components needed to produce a PIV compliant identity credential.

-read more at company Web site [http://www.probaris.com/]