How To Get Started

The process for becoming a customer for PKI services is basically as follows:

• Your first step should be to contact one of the individuals listed under CONTACT US on this web site.  Our sample customer survey (click here for a copy) is a good starting point for your discussions with NFC regarding services.
  
  
• After you have selected NFC as your SSP, we will begin to take you through a series of discussions regarding your specific technical, operational and business requirements.  This is usually done through a series of conference calls and/or site visits (either at your site or ours).  Specific technical requirements identified by NFC must be met in order to fully implement you as a PKI customer.  These technical requirements are provided to you during this discussion stage.
  
  
• Concurrent with these detailed discussions is the development of an Interagency Agreement (IA)/Service Level Agreement (SLA).  The SLA outlines all aspects of the NFC’s and agency’s responsibilities. As the SLA is being developed, costs are also being finalized.
  
  
• Working together through these processes, an implementation timeline is developed for the rollout of your certificates.

Although NFC is able to guide you through the almost all of the PKI deployment process, there is one step that your agency must complete entirely on its own.  This is the Risk Assessment process on your applications.  Once your applications are assessed, your agency must make a decision on the appropriate level of assurance needed by the users of each application.