ITL Newsletter September - October 2020

National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) sent this bulletin at 09/29/2020 03:23 PM EDT

September - October 2020 Newsletter

Keeping the Lights On

The only thing worse than a pandemic would be a pandemic without power. If the lights dim due to a disruption in power generation or distribution, our productivity and quality of life do, too. In today’s cyber environment, diverse and highly skilled adversaries including nation-states, transnational groups, and criminal gangs, are seeking to subvert our critical systems such as the power grid. The National Security Agency (NSA) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) recently issued an alert recommending that all asset owners and operators of critical infrastructure take immediate steps to reduce exposure across their operational technologies and control systems. The alert warns that our most critical infrastructures (e.g., the energy, communications and manufacturing sectors) are vulnerable to cybersecurity attacks.

CULTIVATING TRUST IN IT AND METROLOGY

FEATURE STORIES

Differential Privacy for Privacy-Preserving Data Analysis: An Introduction to Our Blog Series

Does your organization want to aggregate and analyze data to learn trends, but in a way that protects privacy? Or perhaps you are already using differential privacy tools, but want to expand (or share) your knowledge? In either case, this blog series is for you.

NIST's Post-Quantum Cryptography Program Enters 'Selection Round'

The race to protect sensitive electronic information against the threat of quantum computers has entered the home stretch. After spending more than three years examining new approaches to encryption and data protection that could defeat an assault from a quantum computer, NIST has winnowed the 69 submissions it initially received down to a final group of 15. NIST has now begun the third round of public review. This “selection round” will help the agency decide on the small subset of these algorithms that will form the core of the first post-quantum cryptography standard.

NIST Asks A.I. to Explain Itself

It’s a question that many of us encounter in childhood: “Why did you do that?” As artificial intelligence (AI) begins making more consequential decisions that affect our lives, we also want these machines to be capable of answering that simple yet profound question. After all, why else would we trust AI’s decisions? This desire for satisfactory explanations has spurred NIST scientists to propose a set of principles by which we can judge how explainable AI’s decisions are. Their draft publication, Four Principles of Explainable Artificial Intelligence (Draft NISTIR 8312), is intended to stimulate a conversation about what we should expect of our decision-making devices.

HELP WANTED: Growing a Workforce for Managing Privacy Risk

It’s a very different world that we’re living in from the one in which we published the NIST Privacy Framework this past January. These changes have demonstrated that the need for effective privacy programs that can adapt to new risks has never been more important.

STAFF SPOTLIGHT

Elham Tabassi

ITL, Computer Scientist
Congratulations to Elham Tabassi who will be honored by the Washington Academy of Sciences with the 2020 Excellence in Research in Computer Science Award, for outstanding contributions and leadership in computer vision, fingerprint image analysis, facial recognition algorithms, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.2020 Women in Biometrics Award winner

Lisa Carnahan

ITL, Computer Scientist
Congratulations to Lisa Carnahan who will be honored by the Washington Academy of Sciences with the 2020 Leadership in IT Standards for Industry Award, for her national and international leadership in IT research and development for cybersecurity, privacy, health care testing infrastructure, standards, and conformance testing.

Michael Donahue

ITL, Computer Scientist
Congratulations to Michael Donahue who will be honored by the Washington Academy of Sciences with 2020 Excellence in Research in Applied Mathematics Award for excellence in applied mathematics, leading to new tools for modeling and simulation which have transformed research into nanoscale magnetic films, structures and devices.