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NHS CIS Authentication (Spine Security Broker) API

Overview

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

This API is also known as the Spine Security Broker (SSB), and is part of the NHS 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 NHS Care Identity Service 2 (NHS CIS2), which provides additional authentication methods for scenarios where a smartcard might not be preferred or appropriate.

This API 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.

Documentation

NHS CIS Authentication (Spine Security Broker) API documentation

Endpoint

https://digital.nhs.uk/developer/api-catalogue/nhs-cis-authentication-spine-security-broker

Contact

https://digital.nhs.uk/developer/help-and-support