“NIST has recently expanded the flexibility and enhanced the security of Personal Identity Verification (PIV) credentials by updating the following guidelines:

• Special Publication (SP) 800-156, Representation of PIV Chain-of-Trust for Import and Export, provides details regarding the use of chain -of -trust for import and export among PIV Card issuers.
• SP 800-166, Derived PIV Application and Data Model Test Guidelines, supports the expanded use of Derived PIV Credentials, as described below.

These documents support Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 201 -2, Personal Identity Verification (PIV) of Federal Employees and Contractors, which specifies the model for identity credentials that are hosted on a smart card (i.e., the PIV card) and/or on mobile devices (i.e., Derived PIV Credentials). FIPS 201 is an important standard since it defines the identity proofing, registration, and issuance requirements for issuing PIV credentials to federal government employees and contractors. It was established to fulfill Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12 (HSPD-12), which called for a common identification standard to be adopted regarding the interoperable use of identity credentials for physical and logical access to federal government locations and systems.”