NIST has defined Identity Assurance Levels (IALs), which indicate the degree of certainty with which a claimed digital identity corresponds with real world identities. An IAL3 requires exceptional strength verification processes that criminals will find hard to break through.
Our FIDO Certified passwordless authentication and comprehensive identity verification solution, HYPR Affirm, assists organizations in meeting IAL3 requirements with chat, video, facial recognition with liveness detection, document authentication and step-up reproofing based on risk to reduce cyber liability insurance costs while simultaneously decreasing operational expenses and decreasing attack surface.
Document Authentication
NIST has established three Identity Assurance Levels (IALs), which represent the degree of certainty with which digital identities correspond with real identities in real time. These levels allow organizations to balance security requirements against convenience while simultaneously lowering cyber liability insurance premiums and operational costs.
TrustSwiftly makes this task much simpler with high pixel counts for reduced spoofing risk, secure connections against malware protection, and multiple modalities - document authentication and facial recognition with liveness detection - to increase adoption.
An organization may also combine IALs by employing lighter identity proofing with stronger authentication, then employ federation rules for maintaining integrity across systems. This approach often proves practical due to feasibility and certification availability.
Biometric Verification
NIST 800-63A IAL3 provides agencies with guidelines for establishing three identity assurance levels (IAL1-IAL3) to evaluate how closely claimed digital identities correspond with real identities in real life. The guidelines aim to help agencies reduce password reliance while creating more secure authentication models that reduce cyber liability claims, improve user experiences and cut operational costs while simultaneously preventing employee fraud.
Under IAL1, CSPs must send enrollment codes and proofing notifications to different addresses of record; at least one should be physical address validated through records or official documents such as driver's licenses.
TrustSwiftly provides organizations with a remote yet supervised identity proofing solution to achieve compliance with IAL2 and IAL3 regulations. Our solution combines document verification, biometric comparisons with liveness detection to detect attempts at spoofing, cryptographic authenticators for enhanced phishing resistance protection against Man-in-the-middle attacks as well as step-up re-proofing based on risk to provide continuous identity assurance beyond point of verification.
Secure Connections
The NIST Digital Identity Guidelines include three Federation Assurance Levels (FAL), or confidence levels, that one system, known as a Credential Service Provider (CSP), can be trusted by another relying party (RP). FALs specify how much information is shared between CSP and RP, including authentication and attribute data.
FALs released in 2025 specifically emphasize NIST IAL3 verification and strong phishing-resistant authentication with hardware-backed authenticators like FIDO Passkeys as advocates for such measures. These breakthrough revisions also deprecate email OTP and downgrade SMS-based authentication, signaling a shift toward prioritizing stronger methods that are less vulnerable to phishing attacks. TrustSwiftly FIDO Certified passwordless authentication and IAL3 compliant solution help organizations meet the requirements of NIST FALs. Our solution provides remote yet supervised IAL3 identity proofing, document validation, facial comparison with liveness detection, and biometric verification for fraud reduction and protection from SIM swaps, MFA bypasses and man-in-the-middle attacks.
Multiple Modalities
NIST Special Publication 800-63 is an influential and often-cited framework that is often referenced when organizations verify identities, authenticate users and exchange identity data across federated environments. Unfortunately, its complexity makes it hard for those outside the identity industry to comprehend.
NIST 800-63A IAL3 continues the three-prong model of IAL (identity proofing), AAL (authentication), and FAL (federated authentication level), while modernizing requirements to account for emerging security technologies. AALs now require anti-phishing methods like FIDO passkeys for authentication as well as remote identity proofing capabilities.
Our secure workforce identity verification solution, TrustSwiftly, addresses these challenges by creating a continuous and adaptive process to strengthen identity assurance continuously throughout each workday using chat, video, facial recognition with liveness detection, document authentication and step-up reproofing based on risk. This helps organizations balance business and security objectives simultaneously; reducing cybersecurity risks and costs while significantly decreasing attack surface while simultaneously improving productivity - meeting NIST IAL3 standards in digital identity authentication for CSPs.