National Institute of Standards and Technology
NIST stands for the National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is a non-regulatory government agency located in Gaithersburg, Maryland. Its mission is to promote American innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.
NIST works with industry and academia to enhance economic security and improve our quality of life by providing solutions that ensure measurement traceability, enable quality assurance, and harmonise documentary standards and regulatory practices. NIST produces standards and guidelines to help federal agencies meet the requirements of the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). The NIST Cybersecurity Framework is a set of standards for recommended security controls for information systems at federal agencies and businesses of all sizes. The Framework is voluntary and provides businesses with an outline of best practices to help them decide where to focus their time and money for cybersecurity protection. NIST standards and regulations have been created for many Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, from astrophysics to cybersecurity.