CertiPath Assures
Identity
High level identity management is increasingly important for maintenance
staff to have access where needed.
By Ian Parker
F
or years, airports have managed and contractors is recognized as a Government, The UK, Netherlands and
identity access and control for “gold standard” for issuing credentials, French governments and in particular,
secure areas by conducting, says CertiPath. These serve as the the respective aviation and defense
proofing and issuing credentials of authentication mechanism in federal agencies. The CertiPath Bridge oper-
their own – an expensive and time identity management models within ates at a high-assurance level.”
consuming process. CertiPath says the Federal Government. FIPS 201 Workers with direct access to
that much of this effort is redundant provides “a secure chain of trust” the aircraft often drive the evolving
as it doesn’t leverage the work done between the identity proofing and requirements. Maintenance workers
by others towards the same goal – a issuance of a strong identity credential must sign in the log for every action
strong ID to enable access that has a that is secure, interoperable and they take. This manual process is being
high assurance of integrity. operationally useful. made automatic by Boeing and Airbus.
Interoperable credentials that take With these credentials, airport Both these manufacturers require
advantage of US federal standards officials have a substantially easier the use of CertiPath PKI (public key
may benefit airport operators, both time of verifying the identity of infrastructure) for this new, automated
in terms of cost of operations and anyone purporting to be from a process. The airport issues credentials
the security of facilities. Born from community of interest, says the that are CertiPath compliant and can
the 9-11 attacks and the clear need company. This includes maintenance be used by the worker for;
for co-operation across jurisdictions, staff. Access decisions can be made
standards have been defined and more quickly and with greater • Physical access to the security
are in production for reliable identity assurance – as the information behind identification display areas
credentials that can be used locally them is truly the best available and is housing the aircraft
as appropriate. directly from the source. • Logical access to the updates
The Federal Information Processing The company says “By adopting of software downloads for
(FIPS) 201 Personal Identity Verification CertiPath-compliant credentials maintenance of the aircraft
(PIV) standard for federal employees and standards, you can recognize • Signature of certified logs on
any FIPS 201 or PIV Interoperable actions taken for a particular
(PIV-I) credential. After completing aircraft
local suitability and trustworthiness
checks, and making the access The newest Boeing and Airbus
decision (either in a role based mode aircraft will leverage CertiPath PKI
or explicit authentication mode), for interaction with the gate landing
these credentials provide integrity systems, called GateLink. This is a
and interoperability – significantly growing trend for identification and
reducing the time and overhead access control. It extends beyond the
required for making access control traditional PACS for controlled areas
decisions, while deploying state-of- while maintaining interoperability
the-art capabilities for physical and with local PACS solutions for SIDA
logical access control.” and secured access. An airport-issued
credential that is CertiPath-compliant
High assurance can then be used by gate agents and
CertiPath says it “Meets or exceeds ramp workers for
medium-hardware assurance – the
highest a commercial organization • Coordination of maintenance
Jeff Nigriny
can be recognized by the US Federal requirements
34 Aviation Maintenance |
avmain-mag.com | December 2009/January 2010
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