97 Things Every Information Security Professional Should Know

Chapter 40. Take Advantage of NIST’s Resources

Karen Scarfone

NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, is a US government agency working in many areas of science, technology, and measurement. It has been conducting security research and releasing publicly available, copyright-free security guidance and other resources since the early 1970s. Today NIST is known all over the world for its security expertise.

No matter your level of knowledge—from a security newbie to a guru—I guarantee NIST has resources for you that you’ve never seen before. The NIST Computer Security Resource Center (CSRC), is the home for most of the resources. As of this writing, they include 84 project sites and 677 security publications on just about every security topic imaginable, from hardware roots of trust to the security of IoT consumer devices, and from work-from-anywhere security to the development of quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms. CSRC also contains archived publications going all the way back to NIST’s earliest security work. If you use the CSRC search interface, you can choose to see “Withdrawn” publications, and at present there are 654 of them. Some of these publications provide a fascinating view into how security has changed over the past 50 years.

Need to know what a security-related term or acronym means? No problem! CSRC offers an online glossary with definitions ...