Report and Recommendations of the Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, July 2014

“This report from Visiting Committee on Advanced Technology (VCAT) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to the NIST Director contains the VCAT’s recommendations on how NIST can improve the cryptographic standards and guidelines development process. The report is based on the report from the VCAT Subcommittee on Cybersecurity to the VCAT. The Subcommittee based its recommendations on inputs received from a distinguished panel of experts, the Committee of Visitors (CoV), that was established with the specific tasks of reviewing NIST cryptographic processes and of providing the Subcommittee their individual assessments. The report is organized as follows. Section 1 contains a summary, in chronological order, of the events and meetings that occurred between February and June 2014 with detailed meeting minutes placed in appendices. Section 2 briefly discusses the individual CoV assessments and recommendations, with the original versions placed in appendices. Finally, Section 3 contains the VCAT observations and recommendations.”