Contact: Anne Enright Shepherd, aeshep@nist.gov
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: NIST 97-01
Jan. 2, 1997
Contact: Anne Enright Shepherd NIST BEGINS PROCESS TO
(301) 975-4858 DEVELOP ADVANCED
anne.shepherd@nist.gov ENCRYPTION STANDARD
The National Institute of Standards and Technology today launched a
participatory process with American industry to develop an Advanced Encryption
Standard. The AES will provide a means to scramble data to protect vital
electronic information with a high level of security.
A notice in today's issue of the Federal Register invites security
product manufacturers; voluntary standards organizations; federal, state
and local government computer users and others to comment on the draft
minimum acceptability requirements and draft evaluation criteria described.
These will help lay the groundwork for evaluating and choosing the mathematical
formula, or algorithm, to be specified publicly by the standard.
After public comments are taken into consideration and the criteria
are finalized, individuals and organizations wishing to submit algorithms for
consideration will be invited to do so by public notice. Candidate algorithms
are not being solicited by today's announcement.
The AES will be a Federal Information Processing Standard, which applies
to agencies of the federal government, and will be available for voluntary use
by companies, state and local governments and others who wish to use a strong
encryption standard that is backed by the federal government. In developing an
Advanced Encryption Standard the government will seek to leverage the work already
under way by industry to develop new encryption methods to succeed the Data Encryption
Standard. The DES is a current federal standard that is used extensively by many
organizations, including the financial industry. First approved in 1977, DES will
be reviewed again before the end of 1998.
Since DES is used widely and many organizations have considerable
investments in an installed base of encryption equipment, NIST notes in the
Federal Register that "a multi-year transition period will be necessary
to move toward any new encryption standard and that DES will continue to
be of sufficient strength for many applications." NIST will host public
workshops and consult with industry, standards organizations, government
agencies and others to ensure that any transition is smooth.
Written comments on the draft criteria may be sent to the director of the
Information Technology Laboratory, FIPS for AES Comments, A231 Technology
Building, NIST, Gaithersburg, Md. 20899-0001, email: aes@nist.gov.
A non-regulatory agency of the Commerce Department's Technology
Administration, NIST promotes U.S. economic growth by working with
industry to develop and apply technology, measurements and standards.
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News and general information on the National Institute of Standards and Technology
are available on the World Wide Web at http://www.nist.gov.