(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- It’s the little things that matter most, as the saying goes, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has their back. NIST’s newly finalized lightweight cryptography standard provides a defense from cyberattacks for even the smallest of networked electronic devices.

Released as Ascon-Based Lightweight Cryptography Standards for Constrained Devices (NIST Special Publication 800-232), the standard contains tools designed to protect information created and transmitted by the billions of devices that form the internet of things (IoT) as well as other small electronics, such as RFID tags and medical implants. Such miniature technologies often possess far fewer computational resources than computers or smartphones do, but they still need protection from cyberattacks. The answer is lightweight cryptography, which is designed to defend these sorts of resource-constrained devices.

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