The Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-12 called for new standards to be adopted governing the interoperable use of identity credentials to allow physical and logical access to Federal government locations and systems. The Personal Identity Verification (PIV) for Federal Employees and Contractors, (Federal Information Processing Standard 201 (FIPS 201)) was developed to establish standards for identity credentials. This document, Special Publication 800-87 (SP 800-87), provides the organizational codes necessary to establish the PIV Federal Agency Smart Credential Number (PIV FASC-N) that is required to be included in the FIPS 201 Card Holder Unique Identifier (CHUID) and is a companion document to FIPS 201.

This document limits its discussion of cryptographic methods to those that conform to Federal standards (FIPS) and NIST recommendations (i.e., NIST SPs). (The majority of the information in this guideline may be useful to both Federal and commercial personnel and applicable to all computer networks and environments.) Both the Federal government and industry use products that meet Federal standards and recommendations, and standards bodies such as ANSI have also adopted these documents.