CIS1 Authentication (Spine Security Broker)

Use this integration to verify the identity of healthcare workers in England, such as NHS staff. It provides a sign-on capability across local and national digital services using physical and virtual smartcards.

This integration is also known as the Spine Security Broker (SSB), and is part of Care Identity Service (CIS).

You can:

• access the Identity Server which serves up SSO Tokens and manages the sessions for users who have been successfully authenticated
• access the Identity Agent on the end user's workstation, which mediates the authentication transaction and serves subsequent user information on demand as part of the application's authorisation process
• access the Client Signing Interface, which provides client-side digital signing functions for the purposes of Content Commitment. This interface primarily uses cryptographic functions that execute on a user’s smart card.

Users can only be authenticated if they are formally registered on the Spine. This includes creating a user profile, stored in the Spine Directory Service (SDS), containing the user’s roles and other information that the Registration Authority or Service deems necessary to make appropriate data access decisions.

This authentication service makes use of smartcards to provide strong authentication for health care workers to control access to national services. It is being replaced by CIS2 Authentication which provides additional authentication methods for scenarios where a smartcard might not be preferred or appropriate.

This integration is described fully in the Spine External Interface Specification (EIS). Part 6 has the overview and part 7 the formal API specifications. These are a set of Word documents that provide system developers - architects, designers and builders - with the necessary information to connect to Spine national services.

This integration can only be used where there is a legal basis to do so. Make sure you have a valid use case before you go too far with your development. 

You must have made this request before you can go live (see 'Onboarding' below).

The following APIs are related to this one:

• CIS2 Authentication - use this to verify the identity of healthcare workers in England, such as NHS staff, when they access national clinical information systems. This will replace the Spine Security Broker eventually.
• Spine Directory Service - FHIR API - use this to access accredited system information and messaging endpoint details in the Spine Directory Service (SDS) using our FHIR-conformant API.
• Spine Directory Service - LDAP API - use this to access details of organisations, people and systems registered in the Spine Directory Service (SDS) using our LDAP API.

This integration is in production but deprecated. For details, see Deprecation notice: CIS1 Authentication.

If you are developing a new integration, we strongly recommend using CIS2 Authentication instead.

If you have any concerns, contact us.

This integration is a platinum service, meaning:

• it is operational and supported 24 hours a day, 365 days a year
• it has an availability of 99.9% in supported hours

For more details, see service levels.

This integration includes:

• a SOAP API
• various software components that must be installed on the client device
• user interface elements that are launched by the client-side software components

This integration can only be used on Windows devices and only with a limited set of browsers, as explained in the Warrantied Environments Specification (WES).

You need an HSCN connection to use this integration. This is because the client-side Identity Agent component requires HSCN to talk to its server-side counterparts.

For a similar integration that is available on the internet, consider CIS2 Authentication.

For more details, see Network access for APIs.

The security and authorisation aspects of this integration are explained in detail in the Spine External Interface Specification (EIS) Part 6, specifically sections:

• 6.5 Server-side components
• 6.6 SSB authorisation and authentication limitations
• 6.7 SSB authorisation and authentication storyboard and use cases

You can test this integration using our Path to Live environments.

You must get your software onboarded before it can go live.

Contact us before onboarding with this integration. It uses the Common Assurance Process (CAP) which is tailored for each NHS service.

For a full list of interactions for this integration, see the Spine External Interface Specification (EIS), specifically:

• Part 6 - the overview
• Part 7 - the formal specifications of the Java and C APIs