RESTON, Va., March 17 (UPI) -- The U.S. Department of Homeland Security says it has contracted Virginia-based XTec Inc. to support the Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12 program.
The DHS contract with XTec is part of an agency-wide initiative to establish HSPD-12 infrastructure for the DHS enterprise. Officials say the enterprise infrastructure includes licensing for identity and credential management systems interfaced compliant personal identification verification-II cards.
Under the deal, XTec will supply the DHS with its PIV AuthentX technologies for immediate issuance of PIV II credentials for the federal government's HSPD-12 end-to-end compliant programs.
"XTec is pleased to be providing DHS with the enterprise infrastructure for the entire Department," Albert Fernandez, XTec president and chief executive officer, said in a statement. "This is a significant investment in expediting the program and allowing DHS to get past card issuance and into card usage."
Officials say XTec's AuthentX product line offering for the DHS has the capability of "implementing physical and logical access control by using PIV cards enabled with the National Institute of Standards and Technology high security profile," the release said.
"AuthentX is not just a card management and identity management system," said Kevin Kozlowski, XTec vice president. "AuthentX is an authentication solution with numerous application capabilities."
