NIST Roadmap Toward Criteria for Threshold Schemes for Cryptographic Primitives: Publication of NISTIR 8214A
July 07, 2020

NIST has published NISTIR 8214A, NIST Roadmap Toward Criteria for Threshold Schemes for Cryptographic Primitives, which presents a structured approach for exploring the space of threshold schemes. The document discusses the need to consider the security, configurability, modularity, and suitability for validation as features characterizing the schemes. The roadmap is organized into two main tracks—single-device and multi-party—and in each track, the threshold schemes may range from simple to complex in terms of their features.

The document:

• Outlines a mapping of the potential candidate space into specification levels of domains, primitives, and threshold modes
• Considers application motivations for threshold schemes
• Discusses concrete primitives and threshold modes of interest in the multi-party and single-device domains
• Emphasizes the required simultaneous consideration of several features when specifying criteria for concrete items
• Discusses the phases of the roadmap
• Proposes and motivates high-level aspects of criteria and called for contributions from stakeholders
• Describes examples of motivating applications