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ITL History Timeline 1950-Present
| ITL Milestones | Legislation and Computing History |
|---|---|
| 2023 - EXECUTIVE ORDER ON SAFE, SECURE, AND TRUSTWORTHY ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE | 2023 - Executive (EO) 14110 on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence |
| 2023 - NIST released NIST Risk Management Framework Aims to Improve Trustworthiness of Artificial Intelligence. | |
| 2022 - NIST launched the NIST Cybersecurity Program History and Timeline site to celebrate 50 years of cybersecurity work at NIST. | |
| 2021 - NIST published guidance July 9, 2021 outlining security measures for critical software use after consulting with the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). NIST also published guidelines recommending minimum standards for vendors’ testing of their software source code after consulting with the National Security Agency (NSA) as required under the EO. NIST defined critical software last month. | 2021 - Executive Order (EO) 14019 on Promoting Access to Voting. |
| 2021 - Executive Order (EO 14028) on Improving the Nation's Cybersecurity | |
| 2020 - NIST announces the final publication of Special Publication (SP) 800-207, Zero Trust Architecture, which discusses the core logical components that make up a zero trust architecture (ZTA). Zero trust refers to an evolving set of security paradigms that narrows defenses from wide network perimeters to individual or small groups of resources. Released August 2020 | |
| 2020 - Tasked to work with the private sector to identify and promote responsible methods of using PNT services that appropriately manage risks | 2020 - Executive Order on Strengthening National Resilience through Responsible Use of Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Services |
| 2020 - NIST PRIVACY FRAMEWORK: A Tool for Improving Privacy Through Enterprise Risk Management, Version 1.0 Released - January 2020 | |
| 2019 - A Plan for Federal Engagement in Developing AI Technical Standards and Related Tools Released - August 2019 | 2019 - Executive Order (EO 13859) Executive Order on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence |
| 2019 - The NCCoE has released the final version of NIST Cybersecurity Practice Guide SP 1800-12, Derived PIV Credentials. | |
| 2018 - ITL Launched a Privacy Initiative | |
| 2018 - NIST Releases Version 1.1 of its Popular Cybersecurity Framework | |
| 2018 - NIST Publishes Version 1.3 of the Security Content Automation Protocol (SCAP) | |
| 2018 - ITL’s Digital Library of Mathematical Functions Industry Impact | |
| 2018 - Ron Ross, NIST Fellow, received the Presidential Rank Award for his research and leadership in reducing the risk of cybersecurity threats through the creation of NIST's Cybersecurity Risk Management Framework (RMF) and the development of a library of supporting NIST technical standards and technical guidelines. | |
| 2017 - Bradley Alpert, ITL Boulder Laboratories, received a Department of Commerce Gold Medal (team award) for revolutionizing x-ray spectroscopy by developing experimental capabilities on a tabletop that rival massive national user facilities. | |
| 2017- ITL Publishes NICE Cybersecurity Workforce Framework. | 2017 - Executive Order Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure |
| 2017 - ITL Focuses on Privacy Engineering and Risk Management. | |
| 2016 - ITL team received Department of Commerce Gold Medal for exceptional scientific achievement culminating in a loophole-free test of Bell's Theorem using entangled photon pairs. | |
| 2016 - ITL team received Department of Commerce Silver Medal for exceptional technical innovation in leading a global effort to develop Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 202, the "SHA-3" hash function standard. | |
|
2016 - Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity Delivers Final Report . |
|
| 2016 - ITL Text Retrieval Program Celebrates 25 Years . | |
| 2016 - ITL's National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) conducts technical workshop on Applying Measurement Science in the Identity Ecosystem. | 2016 - White House establishes Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity |
| 2016 - ITL Workshop Focuses on Supply Chain Risk Management. | 2016 - OMB Circular A-130 Revised |
| 2016 - ITL Withdraws Six Federal Information Processing Standards. | |
| 2016 -National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) dedicates new lab facilities to accommodate program growth. | |
| 2015 - NIST team received Department of Commerce Gold medal for establishing the National Cybersecurity Center for Excellence (NCCoE) to accelerate adoption of cybersecurity standards and best practices. | |
| 2015 - NIST Security Practice Guide Series (Special Publications 1800-1) established. | |
| 2015 - Secretary of Commerce approved two Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) FIPS 202 and 180-4. | |
| 2014 - NIST and the University of Maryland established Joint Center for Quantum Information in Computer Science. | 2014 - S.1353 Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014 |
| 2014 - ITL Team received Department of Commerce Gold medal award for its exceptional leadership and outstanding technical achievement in developing an innovative Framework to improve the cybersecurity of our Nation's critical infrastructure. | 2014 - S.2521 Federal Information Security Modernization Act of 2014 reauthorized FISMA |
| 2014 - ITL team received Department of Commerce Gold medal award for responding to rapid and dramatic increases in global demand for steel products. | |
| 2014 - ITL team received Department of Commerce Silver medal award for creating an unprecedented biometric evaluation capability that accelerated forensic standards development and innovation in biometric technology. | |
| 2014 - ITL team received Department of Commerce Silver medal award for enabling unprecedented levels of software reliability through development of innovative software testing methodologies and tools. | |
| 2014 - NIST Engineers Test Initial Flight of a Robotic Sensor Platform | |
| 2014 - ITL Achieves Record Levels of Accuracy in Atomic Property Calculations | |
| 2014 - ITL's National Software Reference Library Receives Innovation Award | |
| 2014 - ITL Hosts First NIST Cloud Computing Forensic Science Workshop. | |
| 2014 - NIST Hosts Inaugural Data Science Symposium | |
| 2014 - NIST Releases Cybersecurity Framework for Critical Infrastructure | |
| 2014 - Brian Antonishek, Athanasios Karygiannis, Stephen Quirolgico, and Jeffrey Voas won the Gold Medal for developing innovative techniques to secure and measure the performance of smartphones and applications. | |
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2013 - Mark Carson, Sheila Frankel, Douglas Montgomery, Stephen Nightingale, and Darrin Santay won the Gold Medal for development of the USGv6 Program that established the U.S. Government as a world leader in adoption of the next-gneration Internet protocol IPv6. |
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| 2013 - Audrey Tong won the Silver Medal for developing a novel evaluation framework/metrology and data supporting significant advances in automatic translation of foreign language handwriting. | |
| 2013 - Federal Information Processing Standard 186-4, Digital Signature Standard (DSS), approved by the Secretary of Commerce. See Federal Register Notice | |
| 2013 - ITL Launches NIST Big Data Working Group | |
| 2013 - ITL Publishes Catalog of Computer Forensics Tools | |
| 2013 - ITL Expands Biometric Data Exchange Standard. | |
| 2013 - ITL Developing Cybersecurity Framework. | 2013 - Executive Order -- Improving Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity |
| 2012 - ITL Announces Winner of Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA)-3 Competition | |
| 2012 - ITL Launches National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence. | |
| 2012- ITL Sponsors Workshop on White House BIG DATA Initiative . | |
| 2012 - Federal Information Processing Standard 180-4, Secure Hash Standard (SHS), approved by the Secretary of Commerce. See Federal Register Notice | |
| 2012 - ITL Releases Health Information Technology (HIT) Conformance Testing Tools. | |
| 2011 - ITL Researchers received the Department of Commerce Silver Medal for developing innovative techniques to measure the performance of automated speech translation systems leading to confident U.S. Military fielding. | |
| 2011 - ITL Researchers received the Department of Commerce Silver Medal for creating the Oil Budget Calculator to track the short-term fate of the oil spilled from the Deepwater Horizon well into the Gulf of Mexico. | |
| 2011 - ITL Researchers received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for the successful deployment of DNSSEC at the authoritative root zone that mitigates fundamental vulnerabilities and secures the Internet DNS. | |
| 2011 - ITL Researchers received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for developing a globally-recognized Smart Grid standards framework enabling transition to a clean energy economy and increased U.S. competitiveness. | |
| 2011 - ITL Researchers received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for development of the NIST Digital Library of Mathematical Functions, an unprecedented reference on the special functions of applied mathematics. | 2011 - Administration Releases Strategy to Protect Online Consumers and Support Innovation and Fact Sheet on National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace (NSTIC) |
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2010 - ITL team received Department of Commerce Gold Medal for significantly improving U.S. computer security by designing, developing, and disseminating the Risk Management Framework in support of the Federal Information Security Management Act of 2002. |
2010 - National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education (NICE) |
| 2010 - Chief of Statistical Engineering Division received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for extraordinary dedication and technical achievements to improve the assessment of coca cultivation for the Office of National Drug Control Policy. | |
| 2010 – NIST publishes approved testing procedures for electronic health records. http://www.nist.gov/itl/ssd/hit_20100817.cfm | |
| 2010 – ITL publishes cyber security guidelines for the Smart Grid. http://csrc.nist.gov/publications/PubsNISTIRs.html | |
| 2010 - ITL releases Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF). http://dlmf.nist.gov/ | |
| 2010 - ITL focuses on Cloud Computing. | |
| 2009 – ITL team received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for significantly improving U.S. computer security by creating the Security Content Automation Protocol and the National Vulnerability Database. http://scap.nist.gov/ and http://nvd.nist.gov/ | 2009 - American Recovery and Reinvestment Act |
| 2009 – ITL researchers received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for leadership in the design, standardization, test, and deployment of Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) technologies for the Internet. https://www.nist.gov/programs-projects/high-assurance-domains | |
| 2009 – ITL leads task group developing Smart Grid cyber security strategy and requirements. | |
| 2009 - ITL issues Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 186-3, Digital Signature Standard (DSS), which specifies stronger algorithms for digital signatures in the exchange of information among federal agencies. | |
| 2009 –ITL researchers demonstrated single photon level spectroscopy for elusive infrared (IR) region. | |
| 2009 – ITL's Cryptographic Algorithm Validation Program Validates 1,000th Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) Algorithm. | |
| 2009 - ARRA Legislation Codifies the Role of NIST/ITL in Health IT for the First Time | |
| 2008 – ITL voting team received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for developing voting system guidelines for the nation. | |
| 2008 – ITL's Cryptographic Module Validation Program Validates 1,000th Cryptographic Module. | |
| 2008 – ITL's Computer Security Division received Governmentwide Initiatives Excellence Award. | |
| 2008 – ITL publishes roadmap to federal agencies on implementing Internet Protocol Version 6 (IPv6). | |
| 2008 – ITL Visualization Group won a Department of Energy Office of Advanced Scientific Computing Research Award for their visualization work. | |
| 2008 – ITL's Refreshable Scanning Tactile Graphic Display received U.S. Patent. The invention enables devices allowing users to "view" text, Braille, and imagery using the sense of touch. | |
| 2007 – American National Standard ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2007, Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial, & Scar Mark & Tattoo (SMT) Information, approved. | 2007 - Energy Independence and Security Act |
| 2007 – ITL received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for its Personal Identity Verification work. | 2007 - America COMPETES Act |
| 2007 – ITL launched public competition to develop a new cryptographic hash algorithm to strengthen the security of federal information. | |
| 2007 – ITL delivered final voluntary voting system guidelines to U.S. Election Assistance Commission to improve the nation's voting systems. | |
| 2007 - ITL researchers received the R&D 100 Award for building the high-speed fiber Quantum Key Distribution (QKD) system. | |
| 2006 - Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 200, Minimum Security Requirements for Federal Information and Information Systems approved. | 2006 - Patriot Act renewed by Congress. |
| 2005 – Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 201, Standard for Personal Identity Verification of Federal Employees and Contractors, approved. | |
| 2005 – Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP) 500th validation certificate issued. | |
| 2005 –Draft voluntary voting guidelines delivered to the Technical Guidelines. Development Committee and the Election Assistance Commission | |
| 2005 - ITL Signs Formal Memorandum of Understanding with the Dept. of Health and Human Services Office of the National Coordinator to Collaborate on Health IT | |
| 2005 – ITL/industry-developed ISO/IEC Standard 25062 Software Engineering-Software Quality and Requirements Evaluation - Common Industry Format for Usability Test Reports, approved. | |
| 2005 – Under ITL leadership, five critical international biometric standards were approved. | |
| 2004 – ITL team received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for smart card specifications. | 2004 - Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, Policy for a Common Identification Standard for Federal Employees and Contractors, issued. |
| 2004 – National Software Reference Library (NSRL) data set exceeded ten million Secure Hash Algorithm (SHA)-1 hashes. | |
| 2004 – FIPS 199, Standards for Security Categorization of Federal Information and Information Systems, approved. | |
| 2004 – ITL-developed Role Based Access Control (RBAC) standard approved as American National Standard INCITS 359-2004. | |
| 2004 – Five biometric data interchange format standards and two biometric profile standards approved as American National Standards. | |
| 2003 - ITL received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for its biometrics work. | |
| 2003 – Extensible Markup Language (XML) conformance test suite released. | |
| 2003 – First test results published for Computer Forensics Tool Testing (CFTT) Project. | |
| 2002 - Role Based Access Control (RBAC) development team received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal. | 2002 – Voluntary voting guidelines project launched, mandated by the Help American Vote Act (HAVA) (P.L.107-252). |
| 2002 – NIST quantum information program initiated. | 2002 – ITL tasked to develop standards and guidelines for improved agency management of secure information systems by Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) (Title III of E-Gov) (P.L.107-347). |
| 2002 – Face Recognition Vendor Test Report published. | |
| 2002 – Online NIST/SEMATECH e-Handbook of Engineering Statistics issued. | |
| 2001 -ITL team received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for development of the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) | 2001 – ITL's biometrics research focused on homeland security by the USA PATRIOT Act (P.L.107-056). |
| 2001– FIPS 197, Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), approved. | 2001 – NIST celebrated its Centennial. |
| 2001 – National Software Reference Library (NSRL) released Reference Data Set version 1.0. | |
| 2001 – The E-Book/Braille Reader development team received the R&D 100 Award. | |
| 2000 – American National Standard ANSI/NIST-ITL 1-2000, Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial, & Scar Mark & Tattoo (SMT) Information, approved. | |
| 2000 – ITL team received the Department of Commerce Gold Medal for first global industry standard for electronic books. | |
| 1999 –Under ITL leadership, ISO/IEC 15408: 1999, Common Criteria for IT Security Evaluation, approved. | 1999 –Concerns about potential damages to computers from Y2K were widespread. |
| 1997 – Digital Library of Mathematical Functions (DLMF) project initiated. | 1996 – Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) formed through merge of NIST computing and applied mathematics laboratories. |
| 1997 – ITL-developed S-Check received R&D 100 Award. | 1996 – Information Technology Management Reform Act (P.L. 104-106) replaced the Brooks Act and reaffirmed NIST's responsibilities to develop standards and guidelines for federal computer systems. |
| 1995 – Multi-national Cryptographic Module Validation Program (CMVP) established. | |
| 1994 - Guide to Available Mathematical Software (GAMS) premiers as first NIST publically accessible World Wide Web site | |
| 1994 – ITL team received Department of Commerce Gold Medal for research in cryptography. | |
| 1993 – FIPS 182, Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN), approved. | |
| 1992 – MultiKron developed to promote high-performance computing and flexible scalable systems. | 1991 - NIST established Computing and Applied Mathematics Laboratory. |
| 1992 – Text Retrieval Conference (TREC) and research program initiated. | 1991 – Computer Systems Laboratory (CSL) renamed from National Computer Systems Laboratory (NCSL). |
| 1992 – FIPS 151-2, POSIX, validation testing program initiated. | |
| 1992 – Validation testing services initiated for FIPS 160, C. | |
| 1991 – FIPS 160, C, approved. | |
| 1988 -FIPS 140, General Security Requirements for Equipment Using the Data Encryption Standard. | 1988 – National Computer Systems Laboratory (NCSL) renamed from Institute for Computer Science and Technology (ICST). |
| 1988 – FIPS 151, Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), approved. | 1988 - Center for Computing and Applied Mathematics established. |
| 1988 – TIMIT Acoustic Phonetic Continuous Speech Database, first speech corpora CD, released to speech research community. | 1988 – National Institute of Standards and Technology Act (P.L.100-418) renamed NBS to National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). |
| 1987 – FIPS 127, Database Language SQL, approved. | 1987 – Computer Security Act (P.L.100-235) formally assigned to NBS responsibility for computer security for unclassified federal systems. |
| 1986 – Staffer received the DoC Gold Medal for automating fingerprint identification processes. | |
| 1984 – NBS/ICST accredited as American National Standards developer. | |
| 1981 – Validation testing services initiated for FIPS 68, Minimal BASIC, and FIPS 69, FORTRAN; see historical paper. | |
| 1980 – FIPS 68, Minimal BASIC, and FIPS 69, FORTRAN, approved. | |
| 1979 – FIPS 60, I/O Channel Interface, approved. | |
| 1979 – NBS campus-wide local area network (LAN) implemented. | |
| 1977 – FIPS 46, Data Encryption Standard (DES), approved; see historical paper. | |
| 1976 – Standard Reference Materials 1901, 1902, 1903, and 1904 issued for optical character recognition (OCR) characters. | 1978 - NBS established Center for Applied Mathematics. |
| 1975 – NBSIR 75-687, Effective Use of Computer Technology in Vote-Tallying, published. | |
| 1973 – Validation testing services for FIPS 21, COBOL, initiated. | |
| 1972 – FIPS 21, COBOL, approved. | 1972-Institute for Computer Sciences and Technology (ICST) renamed from Center for Computer Science and Technology. |
| Early 1970s - NBS developed one of five nodes of ARPAnet. | |
| Early 1970s - Efforts initiated to develop standards and guidelines for the protection of unclassified data in federal computer systems. | |
| Early 1970s - Efforts initiated to develop standards and guidelines for the protection of unclassified data in federal computer systems. | |
| Early 1970s - First NBS publication in area of computerized scientific data management; see historical paper | |
| 1969 - Standard Reference Material 3200, Secondary Standard Magnetic Tape-Computer Amplitude Reference, issued. | 1969 - NBS established Center for Computer Science and Technology |
| 1968 - FIPS 1, Code for Information Interchange (ASCII), approved, inaugurating the Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) series; see historical paper. | |
| Mid 1960s - MAGIC, one of the first intelligent computer graphics terminals, developed for federal agencies. | 1965 - Automatic Data Processing (ADP) standards development at NBS mandated by Brooks Act (P. L. 89-306) |
| Mid 1960s - Projects initiated to assist the Federal Bureau of Investigation in automating its fingerprint identification system. | 1965 - Jack Edmonds published seminal paper in the mathematical theory of combinatorial algorithms; see historical paper. |
| 1964 - Classic mathematics reference compendia, Handbook of Mathematical Functions, published; see historical paper. | |
| 1963 - Experimental Statistics Handbook published; see historical paper. | 1961 - Churchill Eisenhart published seminal paper on precision and accuracy of instrument calibration systems; see historical paper. |
| 1958 - SEAC used to process and identify structural diagrams of chemical compounds. | |
| 1957 - SEAC used for NBS research in processing scanned images. | 1951- U. S. Bureau of Census began using the UNIVAC I, the first commercial computer. |
| 1950 - Standard Electronic Automatic Computer (SEAC), designed and built at NBS, begins operation; see historical paper. | 1951 - Hestenes and Steiefel developed the method of conjugate gradients; see historical paper. |
| 1950 - National Applied Mathematics Laboratories renamed as Applied Mathematics Division. | |
| 1950 - Cornelius Lanczos developed first Krylov subspace method for the solution to eigenvalue problems; see historical paper. | |
| Late 1940s - NBS funded to develop first stored-program electronic computer to assist Bureau of the Census in 1950 census. | |
| 1947 - NBS established the National Applied Mathematics Laboratories (NAML) with branches for numerical analysis, computation; machine development, and statistical engineering. | |
| 1947 - John Curtiss, Director of NAML, is elected the first President of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). | |
| 1938 - NBS launched the Math Tables Project in New York City on Behalf of the Works Projects Administration (WPA). | |
| 1901 - Congress created the National Bureau of Standards as one of the Federal government's first physical science research laboratory. |
Created October 12, 2010, Updated November 13, 2023