Assurance Levels

NIST 800-63-3's scale for how much you can trust a verified identity, and where 1Kosmos sits on it.

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Overview

Identity Assurance Level (IAL) is a NIST scale that describes how much evidence backs a claimed identity. The higher the IAL, the more rigor went into proving the person is who they say they are.

1Kosmos is Kantara-certified at IAL2 — the level required by most US federal identity-proofing programs and a growing number of regulated industries.

The three levels

Level	What it means	Typical use case
IAL1	Self-asserted. The user provides their own attributes; no verification is required.	Forum signup, newsletter, low-risk marketing accounts.
IAL2	Identity proved with corroborating evidence. At least one STRONG piece of identity evidence (e.g. passport or driver's license) is verified with the issuing authority, plus a biometric binding to the holder.	Banking, healthcare, government services, regulated workforce onboarding. NIST 800-63-3-compliant.
IAL3	In-person or supervised remote proofing with two STRONG pieces of identity evidence and an in-person biometric collection.	Federal employee badging, secure facility access, classified workflows.

What IAL2 actually requires

NIST 800-63-3 IAL2 is more specific than "verify an ID." A compliant flow must:

1. Collect at least one STRONG and one FAIR identity evidence (or two STRONG), where STRONG includes a passport, REAL ID-compliant driver's license, or US permanent resident card.

2. Validate the evidence with the issuing or authoritative source — for US driver's licenses, this is AAMVA.

3. Verify a binding between the evidence and the live applicant — typically a selfie + liveness check matched against the document photo.

4. Address record verification for at least one piece of evidence, via authoritative source.

5. Reasonable assurance of address of record for follow-up notifications.

How a session maps to an IAL

The IAL of a finished session is a function of which checks ran and passed:

Document scan only                             → IAL1 (insufficient binding)
Document + selfie + liveness + AAMVA           → IAL2 (US DL)
Document + selfie + liveness + AAMVA + SSN     → IAL2 with stronger record verification
Two documents + selfie + liveness + AAMVA + SSN→ IAL2 (Kantara-certified pattern)
In-person proofing with two STRONG IDs         → IAL3 (requires supervised flow)