The US Government Accountability Office (GAO), in its review of six agencies, concluded that US federal agencies need to strengthen their online identity verification processes. The full report can be found here. The GAO recommended that the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) provide guidance on implementing alternative methods of verification that are available to all citizens. The six agencies reviewed are: General Services Administration (GSA), Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Department of Veteran Affairs (VA), Social Security Administration (SSA), United States Postal Service (USPS), and Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). Why the review? The US federal government thus far has relied on consumer reporting agencies (CRAs) to help verify the identities of people who apply for government benefits online. However, the report said that the 2017 cyberattack on Equifax, one of the three major consumer credit reporting agencies in the US, which compromised the data of 143 million Americans, raised questions about reliance on commercial credit agencies/CRAs. What is the problem with the current process? As of now, to perform remote identity proofing, the 6 agencies GAO reviewed rely on CRAs to conduct knowledge-based verification. From the description in the GAO report, and from having gone through USPS’s knowledge-based authentication (KBA) system it is clear that these services use static KBA. Security questions (such as your mother’s maiden name, your first pet, etc.) that you choose while opening a new email account, or a bank account, are static KBA and for obvious reasons quite easy to get…
