The Partnership Between the Nist and the Private Sector

The National Institute of Standards and Technology's (NIST) mission is to help American businesses solve tough technical problems. Whether it is emerging technologies like the Smart Grid or cloud computing or consumer products like flame-retardant mattresses or television screens, NIST's job is to help American industry help itself. With its unrivaled technical expertise and its well-deserved reputation for objectivity, NIST has been working closely with the private sector for many years to help U.S. companies innovate and to compete with their foreign competitors. President Obama issued an executive order in February instructing NIST to begin looking at how we can protect our critical assets from cyber attacks. Almost daily we learn of new cyber threats and attacks targeting our Government agencies and the companies that drive our economy. NIST's computer security work goes as far back as 1972 when it started working on the Data Encryption Standard. Making progress against our cyber adversaries is going to require a sustained, coordinated effort between the public and the private sectors, and it is going to require the combined resources of many different Government agencies and businesses.