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The concept of classes for credentials is far from new. Back in late 1990's the US Office of Management and Budget had issued guidance, OMB M-04-04, which defined four levels of assurance, Levels 1 to 4, in terms of the consequences of authentication errors and misuse of identification credentials:
- Level 1 - Little or no confidence in the asserted identity’s validity;
- Level 2 - Some confidence in the asserted identity’s validity;
- Level 3 - High confidence in the asserted identity’s validity; and
- Level 4 - Very high confidence in the asserted identity’s validity.
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