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NIST Prepares Privacy Framework Report
Protecting our privacy while keeping the digital wheels of society turning may feel mutually exclusive at times, but an upcoming report from NIST may help all of us — individuals and organizations alike — breathe a bit easier. Now that the comment period has closed, NIST plans to release the final report in the upcoming months.
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CULTIVATING TRUST IN IT AND METROLOGY |
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FEATURE STORIES |
Emphasizing the importance of artificial intelligence (AI) to the future of the U.S. economy and national security, on February 11th, 2019, the President issued an Executive Order (EO 13859) directing federal agencies to ensure that the nation maintains its leadership position in AI. Among its objectives, the EO aims to “Ensure that technical standards...reflect federal priorities for innovation, public trust, and public confidence in systems that use AI technologies...and develop international standards to promote and protect."
Border security, crime investigations, background checks, and access control all rely on certain organizations that can seamlessly exchange biometric data like fingerprints. NIST led the development of a standard that made this exchange possible by providing a common language and standardized format for biometric data and information about how it was collected.
Following a multiyear effort, NIST has published the final version of the NIST Big Data Interoperability Framework, a collaboration between NIST and more than 800 experts from industry, academia and government. Filling nine volumes, the framework is intended to guide developers on how to deploy software tools that can analyze data using any type of computing platform, be it a single laptop or the most powerful cloud-based environment.
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STAFF SPOTLIGHT |
Ellen Voorhees
Ellen Voorhees is a computer scientist in the NIST Information Technology Laboratory Information Access Division (IAD). Voorhees has been featured in the October 2019 monthly publication for the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), Communications of the ACM (P. 13, right-hand side). She was featured with her work with the Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) project in IAD’s Retrieval Group. The future for information retrieval is bright, as she told ACM that artificial intelligence offers new research opportunities to determine if deep learning methods are better than existing retrieval algorithms.
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ITL IN THE NEWS |
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PUBLICATIONS |
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SUCCESS STORIES |
The University of Kansas Medical Center used NIST’s Baldrige Cybersecurity Excellence Builder (BCEB) and Cybersecurity Framework (CSF) to improve its Information Security Program. During the past two years, the BCEB and the CSF have led to increased trust and cooperation between information security staff and other colleagues throughout the medical center, improved communication with stakeholders and customers, and provided better understanding for the information security team of where they fit within the larger organization, especially when it comes to cybersecurity.
The Israeli economy is comprised of small and medium-sized businesses, corporations, and other enterprises, including many that are key to its information infrastructure. Like most other nations, the Israeli economy relies heavily on information technology (IT) and operational technology (OT), which leaves the nation and its businesses vulnerable to many types of cyber risks. To ensure Israel’s entire economy could thrive digitally while achieving cybersecurity objectives and protecting important resources, the Israel National Cyber Directorate used NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework to develop the Israeli Cyber Defense Methodology (ICDM) report. Many Israeli companies and organizations have adopted the ICDM, allowing better cybersecurity synchronization across the Israeli government, private industry, and academia.
U of Kansas Medical
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NOTABLE QUOTES |
"Innovation is interwoven throughout NIST and touches on everything we do. We strive to work with industry and science to advance innovation and improve everyone’s quality of life.”
- Charles Romine, Director, Information Technology Laboratory
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