Expanding the SIM Card Use for Public Safety Challenge

NIST challenges solvers to store credentials on a SIM card that can be accessed by a mobile app to provide simple, secure authentication for emergency responders

Other Funding
  • Program Type
    Other Funding

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) Division and its co-sponsors are requesting solvers’ assistance to explore the possibilities and show that the Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC), commonly known as the SIM card, can be used as a secure storage container for public safety application credentials. Solvers are encouraged to participate in the Expanding the SIM Card Use for Public Safety Challenge (the “Challenge”) for a total prize purse of up to $100,000.

Expanding the SIM Card Use Challenge Overview

PSCR and a few partnering entities finished a recent PSCR- sponsored prize challenge, “Expanding the SIM Card Use for Public Safety.” The challenge requested solvers’ assistance to explore the possibilities and prove the Universal Integrated Circuit Card (UICC), commonly known as the SIM card, can be used as a secure storage container for application credentials. The SIM card is a tamper-resistant hardware storage container and, if it was expanded for storing user credentials, it could enable seamless, secure authentication to public safety applications. In addition to its strong security characteristics, the SIM card offers the following potential usability benefits for public safety: Mmore user-friendly; allow networks to provision credentials over-the-air via a secure channel; and potentially enable device sharing by keeping sensitive information on the removable SIM card. The challenge had three finalists that were awarded prize money for their submissions in October 2019. This session will explain the goals, methodologies, and outcomes of the prize challenge. After a panel discussion of the purpose and benefits of the prize challenge, the winner of the prize challenge will give a demonstration of their winning solution.

What's Included

Should a contestant prove successful, their solution could provide significant time and cost savings for public safety units; for example, the solution would provide:

• Increased security of public safety data on mobile/portable devices;

• Additional credential storage container without an external, bulky device;

• Sharing of mobile devices by multiple users by exchanging SIMs;

• Spur ideas for other potential hardware authentication solutions on mobile devices;

• Increased versatility by adding the ability to provision credentials to the SIM card remotely; and

• Potential cost savings as public safety units would not need to purchase separate hardware authentication tokens.

Future Phases

Check out an overview of each competition phase below - complete rules for each phase will be released as the competition progresses.

Documents

Let’s Get Started.

To apply or join the program, please submit an application.