What is eCH-0170, and on which standards is it based?

eCH-0170, the "quality model for the authentication of subjects", is the Swiss e-government standard for rating and comparing the authentication of natural and legal persons on four trust levels; version 2 builds on eIDAS, ISO/IEC 29115 and NIST SP 800-63.

eCH is the Swiss association that publishes e-government standards. eCH-0170 gives Swiss authorities and companies a common yardstick so that, in a federation, one party can tell another "this login has trust level 3" and both mean the same thing. It can also serve as the starting point for certifying IAM service providers.

Key facts:

• Four trust levels (Vertrauensstufen), from "no or minimal trust" to "high trust".
• Built from four sub-models: authentication, registration, governance and federation.
• Bases: version 1.0 (2014) relied mainly on the EU STORK project's assurance framework; version 2.0 (2017) draws on three international standards: the eIDAS regulation, ISO/IEC 29115 and NIST SP 800-63. It also contains a chapter mapping its levels onto those standards.
• Scope: usable for federated and non-federated IAM systems.
• Current version: 2.0.1, published July 2025, a minor update of 2.0.

Go deeper:

• eCH-0170 Quality model for the authentication of subjects, V2.0.1 — the standard's page with summary, the full PDF and a trust-level calculator (in German).