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Enterprise networks have become essential to the operation of companies, laboratories, universities, and government agencies. As they continue to grow both in size and complexity, their security has become a critical concern. Vulnerabilities are regularly discovered in software applications which are exploited to stage cyber attacks. There is no objective way to measure the security of an enterprise network. As a result it is difficult to answer such objective questions as "are we more secure than yesterday" or "how should we invest our limited resources to improve security" or "how does this...

Recently, what are known as “pairings” on elliptic curves have been a very active area of research in cryptography. A pairing is a function that maps a pair of points on an elliptic curve into a finite field. Their unique properties have enabled many new cryptographic protocols that had not previously been feasible. In particular, identity-based encryption (IBE) is a pairing-based scheme that has received considerable attention. IBE uses some form of a person (or entity’s) identification to generate a public key. This could be an email address, for instance. An IBE scheme allows a sender to...

[Redirect to https://nvd.nist.gov] The National Vulnerability Database (NVD) is the U.S. Government repository of standards-based vulnerability management data represented using the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP). This data enables automation of vulnerability management, security measurement, and compliance. NVD includes databases of security checklists, security related software flaws, misconfigurations, product names, and impact metrics.

This FISMA Implementation Project link will automatically redirect you to FISMA (Federal Information Security Modernization Act (FISMA)) background information under the NIST Risk Management Framework project.

Modern computing devices consist of various hardware, firmware, and software components at multiple layers of abstraction. Many security and protection mechanisms are currently rooted in software that, along with all underlying components, must be trustworthy. A vulnerability in any of those components could compromise the trustworthiness of the security mechanisms that rely upon those components. Stronger security assurances may be possible by grounding security mechanisms in roots of trust. Roots of trust are highly reliable hardware, firmware, and software components that perform specific,...

In January 1988, Congress enacted the Computer Security Act of 1987 (Public Law 100-235). A provision of that law called for the establishment of the Computer System Security and Privacy Advisory Board (CSSPAB) within the Department of Commerce. In accordance with the Federal Advisory Committee Act, as amended, 5 U.S.C. § 1001 et seq, the Board was chartered in May 1988. In December 2002, Public Law 107-347, The E-Government Act of 2002, Title III, the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002, Section 21 of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Act (15 U.S.C. 278g-4)...

[Redirect to https://www.nist.gov/nice] The mission of NICE is to energize and promote a robust network and an ecosystem of cybersecurity education, training, and workforce development. NICE fulfills this mission by coordinating with government, academic, and industry partners to build on existing successful programs, facilitate change and innovation, and bring leadership and vision to increase the number of skilled cybersecurity professionals helping to keep our Nation secure.

In 2021, the Computer Security Division launched the Crypto Publication Review Project to identify publications for review based on their original publishing date and any relevant issues raised since then. Please visit the project page to view current publications under review and completed reviews. Background In 2013, news reports about leaked classified documents caused concern from the cryptographic community about the security of NIST cryptographic standards and guidelines. NIST is also deeply concerned by these reports, some of which have questioned the integrity of the NIST standards...

FIPS 201-3 Personal Identity Verification (PIV) for Federal Employees and Contractors is available at https://csrc.nist.gov/publications/detail/fips/201/3/final. A chronical of changes since the initial issuance of FIPS 201 is available in FIPS 201-3, Appendix E, Revision History. Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 201 entitled Personal Identity Verification of Federal Employees and Contractors establishes a standard for a Personal Identity Verification (PIV) system (Standard) that meets the control and security objectives of Homeland Security Presidential Directive-12...

[Redirect to https://www.nist.gov/itl/applied-cybersecurity/privacy-engineering] The NIST Privacy Engineering Program’s (PEP) mission is to support the development of trustworthy information systems by applying measurement science and system engineering principles to the creation of frameworks, risk models, guidance, tools, and standards that protect privacy and, by extension, civil liberties.

The Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002 was passed by Congress to encourage the upgrade of voting equipment across the United States. HAVA established the Election Assistance Commission (EAC) and the Technical Guidelines Development Committee (TGDC), chaired by the Director of NIST, was well as a Board of Advisors and Standard Board. HAVA calls on NIST to provide technical support to the EAC and TGDC in efforts related to human factors, security, and laboratory accreditation. The Information Technology Laboratory supports the activities of the EAC and TGDC related to voting equipment...

[Redirect to https://www.nist.gov/itl/smallbusinesscyber] The vast majority of smaller businesses rely on information technology to run their businesses and to store, process, and transmit information. Protecting this information from unauthorized disclosure, modification, use, or deletion is essential for those companies and their customers. With limited resources and budgets, these companies need cybersecurity guidance, solutions, and training that is practical, actionable, and enables them to cost-effectively address and manage their cybersecurity risks. This NIST Small Business...

Published as RFC8322 in the IETF, The Resource Oriented Lightweight Information Exchange (ROLIE) is standard for exchanging security automation information between two machines, or between a machine and a human operator. As a cooperative effort between NIST and the international computer security community, ROLIE seeks to improve the current state of the art in security automation information sharing. Reducing communication bandwidth, enabling new automation use cases, and easing complicated workflows, ROLIE represents another incremental improvement towards full security automation....

To become a laboratory for the Cryptographic and Security Testing (CST) program there are a number of requirements: A lab must become accredited under the CST Lab Accreditation Program (LAP) which is part of NIST’s NVLAP. A lab must sign and enter into a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with NIST. A lab must follow the “Principles of Proper Conduct” listed below. A lab must be US based if participating in the NPIVP scope. The following accreditation scopes maintained at NIST: Cryptographic Algorithm Validation Program (CAVP); Cryptographic Module Validation...

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Human-Centered Cybersecurity program, which is part of the Human-Centered Technologies Group (formerly named Visualization and Usability Group), seeks to "champion the human in cybersecurity" by conducting interdisciplinary research to better understand and improve people’s interactions with cybersecurity systems, products, processes, and services. Be sure to connect with NIST and the Human-Centered Cybersecurity program on social media and subscribe to GovDelivery to stay apprised of our latest research. Per the Sept. 29, 2026,...

[Redirect to: https://www.nist.gov/itl/ssd/software-quality-group/samate/software-assurance-reference-dataset-sard] The purpose of the Software Assurance Reference Dataset (SARD) is to provide users, researchers, and software security assurance tool developers with a set of known security flaws. This will allow end users to evaluate tools and tool developers to test their methods. You will be redirected to the SARD homepage.

[Redirect to https://www.nccoe.nist.gov/projects/software-supply-chain-and-devops-security-practices ] DevOps brings together software development and operations to shorten development cycles, allow organizations to be agile, and maintain the pace of innovation while taking advantage of cloud-native technology and practices. Industry and government have fully embraced and are rapidly implementing these practices to develop and deploy software in operational environments, often without a full understanding and consideration of security.

[Redirect to https://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/secure-systems-and-applications/samate] The NIST Software Assurance Metrics And Tool Evaluation (SAMATE) project is dedicated to improving software assurance by developing methods to enable software tool evaluations, measuring the effectiveness of tools and techniques, and identifying gaps in tools and methods. The scope of the SAMATE project is broad: ranging from operating systems to firewalls, SCADA to web applications, source code security analyzers to correct-by-construction methods.

[Redirect to: https://www.nist.gov/itl/csd/secure-systems-and-applications/national-software-reference-library-nsrl] The National Software Reference Library (NSRL) is designed to collect software from various sources and incorporate file profiles computed from this software into a Reference Data Set (RDS) of information. The RDS can be used by law enforcement, government, and industry organizations to review files on a computer by matching file profiles in the RDS. This will help alleviate much of the effort involved in determining which files are important as evidence on computers or file...

Thanks for helping shape our ransomware guidance! We've published our final version of NIST IR 8374 Revision 1, Ransomware Risk Management: A Cybersecurity Framework Profile. It reflects changes made to the Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) from CSF 1.1 to CSF 2.0 which identifies security objectives that support managing, detecting, responding to, and recovering from ransomware events. NIST is still actively seeking feedback on resources that can help communities prepare for and recover from ransomware attacks. Please reach out to us at ransomware@nist.gov NIST has also previously published...

[Redirect to https://www.nccoe.nist.gov/projects/building-blocks/data-security] The Data Security program at the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has produced guidance for both data integrity and data confidentiality. Each will consist of a series of publications that work together to identify, protect, detect, respond to, and recover from critical events.

[Redirect to https://www.nccoe.nist.gov/projects/implementing-zero-trust-architecture] Conventional network security has focused on perimeter defenses, but many organizations no longer have a clearly-defined perimeter. To protect a modern digital enterprise, organizations need a comprehensive strategy for secure “anytime, anywhere” access to their corporate resources (e.g., applications, legacy systems, data, and devices) regardless of where they are located.

[Redirect to: https://www.nist.gov/cybersecurity/improving-cybersecurity-supply-chains-nists-public-private-partnership] In 2021, NIST announced a new effort to work with the private sector and others in government to improve cybersecurity supply chains. This initiative, NIICS, will help organizations to build, evaluate, and assess the cybersecurity of products and services in their supply chains, an area of increasing concern. It will emphasize tools, technologies, and guidance focused on the developers and providers of technology.

Want to build your own cybersecurity guidance? This tool provides a simple way to access reference data from various NIST cybersecurity and privacy standards, guidelines, and Frameworks– downloadable in common formats (XLSX and JSON). Other News & Info Program News Get the scoop on what’s been happening with the CPRT program. More Contact Us Reach out via email with questions, ideas, or thoughts. Email

[Redirects to https://www.nccoe.nist.gov/crypto-agility-considerations-migrating-post-quantum-cryptographic-algorithms] The advent of quantum computing technology will compromise many of the current cryptographic algorithms, especially public-key cryptography, which is widely used to protect digital information. Most algorithms on which we depend are used worldwide in components of many different communications, processing, and storage systems. Once access to practical quantum computers becomes available, all public-key algorithms and associated protocols will be vulnerable to criminals,...