What is the NIST? What is the purpose of NIST?

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• Why should you try and be compliant?
• Who needs to be NIST compliant?
• How do you comply with regulations and standards?

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, also known as the NIST, is a United States government laboratory that works to develop, test, and recommend best practices for federal agencies, and other organizations relating to things such as online security. Metrics, measurements, and regulations, like the?Federal Information Protection Standard, are created by the NIST to help strengthen the reliability and security of technologies being developed. All federal organizations are required to follow standards outlined by the NIST in their specific field when they are dealing with confidential, federal data. The standards and regulations set out by the NIST are recognized internationally, meaning any organization that follows the NIST’s standards for their business sector is trusted to be using the correct practices in their technology. NIST standards and regulations have been created for many Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, from astrophysics to cybersecurity.

Why should you try and be compliant?

One of the many questions asked by organizations is why should I comply with the NIST’s standards and regulations? The main reason is the amount of testing put into the publications they release. Weeks, months, and sometimes years of testing are implemented into the subject NIST publications are related to before they are released to the public. This ensures that methods and practices proposed in the standards are the most up-to-date and methods available at the time of writing. The research is done by a team of professionals in their field, so the publications released to the public are extremely accurate, both informationally and technically.

Another reason to comply with the NIST’s standards is the fact that it will make your organizations infrastructure and new technologies much more secure. The goal of releasing NIST publications is to provide a more secure environment for both the government and companies in general. The more organizations that follow these standards, the less security breaches and vulnerabilities are available for exploitation by threat actors. Some regulations, like the Federal Information Protection Standard (FIPS), are required for work with the federal government. This means, any company seeking federal work contracts, will need to be FIPS 140-2 compliant, along with potentially needing to comply with other regulations, depending on the organizations field.

Compliance can also provide your business with an edge over competitors. Those organizations that comply with federal security standards will appeal to customers over those businesses who don’t comply. Those same customers will trust your organization to produce an equally secure product or service in the future, winning your company future business with a recurring client. Some organizations will require compliance with specific regulations if a company wishes to be their vendor. One of these organizations is the United States federal government.