Staff Digital Certificate Brick

A Staff Digital Certificate is a digital certificate that is issued to an individual staff member of NIH. A staff member is defined as anyone who possesses a NIH issued Federal ID badge (e.g., employee, contractor, public health service member, etc.). The following digital certificates are outside the scope of this standard:

• Digital certificates issued to individuals outside of NIH,
• Digital certificates issued to other types of entities that are not staff members, including but not limited to web services and other devices), and
• Special purpose certificates (for example, those used to support the Microsoft®
  encrypted file system).

The Staff Digital Certificate Brick establishes the HHS Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) as the single tactical and strategic source of staff digital certificates at NIH. This standard is based on analysis of existing technologies in place at NIH coupled with HHS and Federal Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) policy requirements. HHS IRM Policy1 on PKI requires that all Agencies within HHS operate within a single HHS-wide PKI trust domain that is cross-certified (i.e., interoperable) with the Federal Bridge Certification Authority (FBCA). OMB PKI policy2 requires Federal Agencies to acquire digital certificates from a GSA qualified commercial shared service provider. The HHS PKI is the only solution that meets these requirements.

• Tactical and Strategic products were selected to leverage NIH's investment in products that are a proven fit for NIH's known future needs. Leveraging baseline products in the future will minimize the operations, maintenance, support and training costs for new products.
• Some baseline products have been designated as Containment. These products are either not as widely or successfully deployed at NIH, or they do not provide as much functionality, value, or Total Cost of Ownership as low as the selected Tactical and Strategic products.
• HHS policy dictates that HHS PKI digital certificates be deployed as User PKI certificates for all agencies within the department. Therefore, it is the only Tactical and Strategic solution for NIH.