The NIST National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has published the final version of NIST Interagency Report (IR) 8523, Multi-Factor Authentication for Criminal Justice Information Systems. 

Credential compromises represent an emergent cybersecurity threat, serving as a gateway for malicious actors to infiltrate networks and systems and gain access to sensitive data. Whether through phishing, brute-force attacks, or exploiting vulnerabilities in authentication mechanisms, credential compromises can pose significant risks to organizations and individuals. 

The Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Security Policy (versions 5.9.2 and later) requires the use of multi-factor authentication (MFA) to protect access to criminal justice information (CJI). As both criminal and noncriminal justice agencies around the country begin to implement this requirement, they can face several technical implementation challenges.

NIST IR 8523 can help agencies identify and address their MFA implementation needs by providing insight into MFA architectures, associated technologies, and how they can be used to meet law enforcement-specific use cases. This publication also outlines how computer-aided dispatch (CAD) and record management systems (RMS) can support standards and best practices that provide agencies with multiple ways to implement MFA.

To ensure the relevance of this publication’s content, the NIST and the FBI CJIS teams engaged with agencies around the country on their current and future MFA implementations, as well as law enforcement technology vendors on their current and future support for MFA standards and best practices. The architectures, use cases, technologies, and challenges in this publication are heavily based on those discussions. 

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