Secretary of Commerce, Don Evans, announced the National Institute of Standards and Technology?s (NIST; www.nist.gov), approval of a new information technology encryption standard for the federal government. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES; https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/cryptographic-standards-and-guidelines/archived-crypto-projects/aes-development) is expected to be widely used in the . . .
Secretary of Commerce, Don Evans, announced the National Institute of Standards and Technology?s (NIST; www.nist.gov), approval of a new information technology encryption standard for the federal government. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES; https://csrc.nist.gov/projects/cryptographic-standards-and-guidelines/archived-crypto-projects/aes-development) is expected to be widely used in the private sector, as well, to protect sensitive computerized information and financial transactions. The announcement marked the culmination of a four-year effort by computer scientists at the NIST to achieve a highly secure algorithm for the AES.

The effort was conducted through a competition that started in 1997. Researchers from 12 different countries submitted encryption algorithms. Each of the algorithms submitted was required to support key sizes of 128, 192 and 256 bits. For a 128-bit key size, there are approximately 340 undecillion (340 followed by 36 zeros) possible keys.

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